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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF CAMPBELL ARMSTRONG

“Campbell Armstrong is thriller writing’s best-kept secret.” —The Sunday Times

“Armstrong is among the most intriguing of blockbuster writers … near to unputdownable.” —GQ

“While touching on suspense with a skill to please hard-core thriller addicts, he manages to please people who … warm to readable novels of substance.” —Daily Mail

“Armstrong’s skill is not just an eye for a criminally good tale but a passion for the people that will populate it.” —The Scotsman

“Subtle and marvelous … This is a dazzling book.” —The Daily Telegraph on Agents of Darkness

“A consummate psychological thriller … Without doubt, Armstrong is now in the front rank of thriller writers.” —Books on Heat

“Armstrong has outdone both Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett.” —James Patterson on Jig

“A full throttle adventure thriller.” —The Guardian on Mambo

“A wonderful puzzle that keeps us guessing right to the end.” —Publishers Weekly on Mazurka

The Punctual Rape

Campbell Armstrong

For Iain and Stephen

and for my mother and

father with love

The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember

From the punctual rape of every blessed day …

RICHARD WILBUR

Part One

‘I didn’t touch her. I couldn’t have raped her.’

S. Berg

One

Mrs Jacobitz, the widow who owned the house, showed Berg to his room. From the slope of the walls and the high position of the window he assumed that it had been an attic at one time. There was a wooden cabinet, a table and chair, and a small bed covered with a patchwork quilt. Although the window was open a couple of inches the place smelled stale.

The widow said, ‘I should think that you’ll be comfortable here. Don’t you?’

Berg, who was now seated on the bed, felt like answering that he would be even more comfortable if there were an easy chair in the room or if the bed were a little less hard. But he realised that he was judging the place as though it were a city apartment, which it wasn’t—and since he had come in a sense to a different world from the one he knew, he would have to make concessions and allowances rather than pointless comparisons.

‘It seems perfectly adequate,’ he answered.

The widow looked at him quickly, as if his remark contained the germ of an insult. Adequate, he thought: of course it wasn’t the correct word, it had undertones of condescension.

‘I mean,’ he began, and then stopped. To explain himself could only cause confusion. ‘Yes, it reminds me a little of my own home.’

‘Does it? Does it really?’ the widow asked.

Berg took out a cigarette and lit it. He smoked rarely, generally only when he felt tense.

‘Is there an ashtray?’

Mrs Jacobitz looked round the room but did not answer him. At first it occurred to him that she was looking for an ashtray and that only his presence restrained her from opening the cabinet or searching under the bed. Yet there was a vagueness about her expression that suggested she was killing time rather than fulfilling a definite purpose. After a while, Berg went to the window and flicked his ash out.

‘I expect you’re tired and want to rest,’ the widow said.

‘I’d like to. But I have to see Mr Lazlow.’

‘Of course, of course.’

Mrs Jacobitz sighed and wiped her hands on her apron, twisting each finger individually in the cloth as though she were wrapping fragile objects for a long and hazardous journey. As she did this, Berg noticed that the fingers were swollen with arthritis and that as she pulled on them the bones cracked, a noise he found intolerable.

And then she sat down on the bed and stared at her feet. She was wearing a pair of tattered slippers of a kind Berg had last seen at the end of the war, when they were fashionable. Perhaps it took a long time for fashions to reach this remote corner of the country.

Then, quite suddenly, she said, ‘My husband died three years ago on April the first. From food-poisoning. He was a woodman, you see, and one day he mistook toadstools for mushrooms. His death was an accident.’

Berg, having thrown the end of his cigarette from the window felt obliged to say, ‘It’s a common enough mistake.’ He waited while the widow paused, wondering if there was more of the story to follow or if there was somehow a connection between Mr Lazlow—whose name, after all, had just been mentioned—and the unfortunate woodman. But Mrs Jacobitz rose from the bed and said nothing.

Berg shook his bead. His whole body was consumed with tiredness and his brain still echoed to the remembered rhythms of the train. He licked his lips which had suddenly become dry and said, ‘Still, you would think that a woodman would be able to tell the difference between mushrooms and toadstools. After all, he works in close contact with nature——’

Mrs Jacobitz looked at him with suspicion and alarm. ‘What are you saying? Are you suggesting that his death wasn’t an accident? That he took his own life?’

‘Please, don’t misunderstand me,’ Berg said, wondering why the widow had raised the matter in the first place and annoyed with himself for being foolish enough to speculate further. ‘I’m simply saying that since he probably knew the difference between the two, it makes his death even more tragic.

‘Tragic, yes,’ the widow said, but without conviction, as if she suspected Berg’s motives.

For his part, Berg resolved there and then to let the matter drop. ‘Can you direct me to Mr Lazlow’s office?’

The widow, who had been standing by the door, moved into the centre of the room and closed her eyes while she visualised the directions.

‘Turn right as you leave the house. Walk until you reach the junction in the road and then turn left. Two hundred yards further along you’ll see the Anniversary Monument which you can’t miss. On the other side of the Monument you’ll see Lazlow’s office. A brown building on the corner.’

Berg turned to look at his face in a small cracked mirror that hung near the window. He needed a shave, but there wasn’t time. He combed his hair quickly and then turned to leave.

‘Supper is served at seven,’ the widow said. ‘I hope you won’t be late.’

Berg followed her out of the room and down the stairs. He was agitated a little by the fact that she moved slowly and that the staircase was too narrow to allow him to pass her. All the same, he was glad to be out of the stuffy room.

When they reached the ground floor, she turned to him and began to repeat the directions. He was forced to interrupt her.

‘I must get a move on,’ he said.

The widow smiled. ‘I hope your stay in my house will prove to be a pleasant one.’

Outside, in the thin morning sunlight, he thought briefly about the death of the woodman and then put the matter out of his mind.

Two

Through the window beyond Lazlow’s head he could see a horse and cart go down the street. For a moment his attention was diverted from what Lazlow was saying and, realising that he had not heard the last two or three sentences, he became nervous. Was it a direct consequence of his tiredness, this inability to concentrate? Or had it always been a fault? He could not remember.

Lazlow paused long enough to take a cigarette from his jacket. He searched for a match and when he failed to find one he began to dissect the cigarette with a paper-knife. Berg watched this performance without surprise; in his state of nervous fatigue, he felt that he had let slip the reality of the situation and that in any case there was nothing particularly surprising in the sight of a man carving a cigarette with a knife.

‘Is your health good?’ Lazlow asked.

‘As I said in my application form, I’ve never had any serious illnesses. I had chickenpox as a child——’

‘What about complaints that you would describe as other than serious?’ Lazlow had finished with the broken cigarette and was now sweeping a little pile of tobacco and some shreds of paper to the side of his desk.

‘I had my tonsils removed, of course,’ Berg said.

‘Why “of course”? Is it a universal principle that people beyond a certain age no longer have their tonsils?’

Berg allowed himself a little laugh which—when he saw that Lazlow had remained serious—he quickly contained. He had no wish to give Lazlow an impression of levity; rather, he wanted to impress him that here was a serious individual, capable of concentration and diligence.

‘Anyway, your health isn’t of any great importance in this post,’ Lazlow said. He took Berg’s application form from a drawer and spread it on the desk. Seeing this, Berg was alarmed. His own handwriting, dense and black and affected, embarrassed him—even if he couldn’t remember now what he had actually written. Besides, since he had already received official confirmation that the post was his, what was the point of the interview? Was the position now in some doubt? Had there been confusion? Had they changed their minds about him? Worse still, had he made the two day journey from the capital—two days huddled alongside strangers in a sticky, noisy railway compartment—for nothing? No, he thought; he was worrying unduly. It was only natural that Lazlow, who would be his superior, should want a chance to get to know him.

‘The post is entirely sedentary and will not involve strenuous activity. For one thing, you won’t need to go to the Site. If you ever have to contact the Site Agent, you use the telephone. So the state of your health, you see, is of little real significance. But I had to ask. For the record, you understand.’

Berg smiled again, though feebly this time, in such a way that his expression was open to various interpretations. The last thing he wanted was for Lazlow to consider him frivolous.

Lazlow rose, holding the application in one hand.

‘Your main function here will be to check invoices against original orders. For discrepancies. The work calls for a sharp eye and a quick brain.’

Lazlow walked up and down the room staring at the form as if it were itself an invoice that had to be scrutinised for errors—which, Berg thought, in a sense it was. On the form he had written as many of the remembered details of his life as were required. But had he omitted anything? Were there discrepancies? In his fatigue, the room seemed to swim before his eyes.

Lazlow sat down. ‘It isn’t often that we get someone coming up here from the capital. Usually the traffic runs in the other direction. There isn’t much in this town to attract a man born and bred in the city, like yourself … Unless, of course, he has a taste for the quiet life.’

Berg cleared his throat, pleased that Lazlow’s scrutiny of the application seemed to be at an end. ‘I felt like making a change,’ he said.

‘Change is often the harbinger of chaos,’ Lazlow said. He immediately wiped his lips with the back of his hand as if he regretted the remark. His eyes—which were small and intensely bright—had a fixed appearance, like those of someone seeking to bring a distant object into focus. ‘You will report for work tomorrow morning at eight.’

‘Yes,’ Berg said. He was inclined to add that he was an early riser by nature, as well as being industrious and conscientious, but decided against it. He also had it in mind to ask some questions about the nature of the work on the Site, but these could wait until his work had begun. He got up from his chair and for a moment he and Lazlow stared at each other.

They went together to the door.

‘How are your lodgings?’ Lazlow asked. ‘Mrs Jacobitz has a splendid reputation.’

Berg, who was on the point of saying something critical about the spartan nature of his room, was deterred by Lazlow’s remark on the widow’s reputation—and before he had time to say anything at all, he had been shown on to the street.

‘Until tomorrow,’ Lazlow said.

Outside, Berg walked in the direction of his lodgings. The interview, he thought, had gone quite well—in spite of the fact that he needed a shave and a good night’s sleep. The train journey from the capital, to say the very least, had been an ordeal. The compartment had been full of agricultural workers making the trip northwards, who had insisted on drinking and singing and Berg, unable to sleep except in brief snatches, had watched the black landscape flit past. The journey had drained him of his energy and in some way had depressed him—as if the decision to leave the city were something he unconsciously regretted. But he regretted nothing. The time had come to make a clean break and having made it there wasn’t room for regret.

He found his way back to his lodgings without difficulty. It was only when he was lying on his bed and smoking a cigarette that he realised that not only had Lazlow not smiled in the course of the interview but he had succeeded in looking overwhelmingly solemn. Yet for Berg it was an axiom that those who were slow to smile, those who did not squander their smiles, were those who could best be trusted in this world, and he felt that Lazlow was a man on whom he could depend—if he ever needed such a person.

He lay down and closed his eyes. In spite of his tiredness he did not fall asleep at once. Possibly it was the effect of lying in a strange room or possibly because his mind—against his will, against all his resolutions—continued to regurgitate images of the city he had only recently left. He turned on his side; the bed was hard and uncomfortable and he could not avoid comparing it with the one he had slept in at his mother’s apartment … although that seemed an age away now.

Three

When he woke in the late afternoon he was aware of someone else in the room. He sat up quickly and rubbed his eyes, expecting to see Mrs Jacobitz. But instead there was a woman he had never seen before. She was standing at the end of the bed watching him, and from the fixed manner in which she stood he at once assumed that she had been observing him while he slept—a thought he found embarrassing. Had he been snoring? Muttering in his sleep? Scratching himself?

He fumbled around in the blankets, found his cigarettes, and lit one.

‘I don’t think we’ve met.’

The woman smiled. ‘I’m Monika. Mrs Jacobitz’s niece.’

‘My name is——’

‘Mr Berg. You’re our new lodger.’

She sat down on the edge of the bed and placed her hands together on her lap. A little uneasily Berg smiled and offered her a cigarette.

‘No thank you,’ she said.

Berg guessed that she was about thirty-five, his own age, although it was hard to be sure. For one thing, she was dressed entirely in black which might have made her look older. Her face was plain, although she had what seemed to him an attractive mouth, and her hair, piled up at the back and held in place by pins, was a pleasant yellowy brown.

‘I gather that you’ve come up here to work,’ she said.

Berg nodded. ‘Don’t think me ill-mannered, please, but is there any reason why you entered my room?’

‘Simply to introduce myself.’

Berg rose from the bed and put his cigarette out of the window. It was a simple enough explanation yet it did not explain why, when she had seen that he was asleep, she had not turned round and left the room. It was a common decency, after all, to allow a person to sleep in peace.

‘Had you been waiting long for me to wake?’ he asked.

‘No. I’d only just come in.’

Of course, thought Berg, there was no way of substantiating the truth of her remark: it may equally have been false. But he was prepared to give her the benefit of any doubt, if only to spare himself the discomfort of thinking she had been watching him while he slept. He walked up and down the room and eventually came to a halt by the table. He did not know why, but her presence unnerved him.

‘Do you think you’ll enjoy working here?’ she asked. She was now kneeling on the bed, her eyes fixed on him intently.

‘I imagine so,’ he answered.

‘Your work will be clerical?’

‘To begin with. There might be prospects of advancement later.’

‘Then you’re ambitious?’ Monika laughed and clapped her hands, like a child understanding a joke.

‘No more ambitious than the next man,’ Berg said. He felt a terrible lethargy all of a sudden and wanted nothing more than to lie down on the bed—which he couldn’t do so long as she was there. He sat down at the table and drummed his fingers.

‘My bedroom is just through the wall from this one,’ Monika said.

‘Is it?’ Berg wondered if he detected a note of sudden familiarity in her voice: he couldn’t be certain. But the information seemed entirely superfluous, the sort of knowledge that might be useful in, say, the event of a fire. He stopped drumming the table and began to suck his fingernails, a nervous habit that he should have left behind him in the city—as he had left so many other things.

‘My aunt Vera sleeps on the ground floor. And when she sleeps, believe me, she really sleeps.’

‘You mean she sleeps soundly?’

‘Exactly that.’ Monika blinked—or was it, Berg wondered, a crude attempt at a wink? ‘What time is it?’

Berg looked at his watch. ‘Five thirty.’

‘Supper isn’t until seven. Perhaps we could walk round the town for an hour or so. I could show you the sights.’

Divided between his fatigue and the prospect of getting Monika out of his room, Berg thought for a moment. There was something about the way she sat on the bed, something about the manner in which her hands jumped from time to time up to her hair as if they were alive and apart from the rest of her, that disturbed him. But he could not put his finger on it.

‘That’s a good idea,’ he said eventually. ‘It gives me a chance to acquaint myself with the town.’

‘And with me,’ Monika said.

He put on his jacket and followed her downstairs, counting the number of pins in her hair. He could see at least sixteen, tiny strips of soft metal intricately woven with the strands of her hair. Outside it was warm although there was no sign of the sun. They walked together in silence until they came to the Anniversary Monument.

‘Our local landmark,’ Monika said. ‘This is where lovers meet in the evening.’

‘I see,’ Berg said. He was struck by the odd absence of traffic: from time to time a motor car went past, or one or two military trucks, but when the noise of their engines had faded there was a surprising silence that he found peaceful.

‘Although lovers meet here, they don’t actually do anything here, if you see what I mean. There are plenty of fields around the town for that sort of activity.’

Berg said nothing to this as they continued to walk. Sometimes Monika would point a place out to him relating it to some personal incident. There was Kriff’s, the butcher, where she had once dropped twelve eggs from her basket; Samuels, the dressmaker, where she had bought a skirt a few months ago, a red skirt that didn’t really fit properly—and anyway, it was well known that Mrs Samuels was fair game for any of the soldiers from the military encampment. Berg found this information uninteresting and the sound of her voice—which he thought had the faint metallic edge of water dripping into a saucepan—extremely monotonous. So when she suggested that they have something to drink in a café, he was relieved: with her mouth full of liquid, she would at least have to pause between sentences.

They went into a small dark café that smelled of bleach and tobacco smoke. A group of men were playing cards on a long table under the window. Berg asked for two cups of coffee and he and Monika sat down in an alcove at the back of the room.

‘Why did you leave the capital?’ she asked.

‘I felt like a change,’ he said.

‘Yes, but why come here of all places?’

‘Because of the post I was offered.’

‘Are you a party member?’

Berg took out a cigarette. ‘Politics isn’t my line.’

‘But if you’re ambitious don’t you think you should join the party?’

‘Did I say I was ambitious?’

There was an outbreak of laughter from the card table. He turned his head to see what had caused it, but superficially everything was the same as it had been—except that two or three of the players were looking in his direction and smiling. Perhaps irrationally, he imagined that the laughter had been directed at himself and Monika. Perhaps one of the men had made a crude remark: ‘That bugger’s trying to get his hand up her skirt.’ He turned to look at Monika who had noticed nothing unusual and was drinking her coffee.

‘Why isn’t a healthy man like you married?’ Monika asked.

‘I’ve never had the urge to get married.’

‘Haven’t you ever been in love?’

A little exasperated by her questions, Berg said, ‘Please don’t think me impolite, but I don’t really see the point of your questions. If I don’t answer——’

‘That’s your privilege,’ Monika said and reached for her drink, sighing as if she were weary of Berg’s guarded answers to her questions. She crossed her legs and Berg could have sworn that she deliberately applied her foot against his shins with some pressure. But there was no way of telling whether she had meant to do it or not, or whether—if she had intended it—there was any purpose behind it. Just the same, he felt uncomfortable as though the sudden physical contact had left him exposed to her.

‘If you don’t answer my questions, how can we ever get to know each other?’

‘There are questions and questions,’ Berg said, as tactfully as he could. ‘I mean, there are some sorts of questions one can answer immediately and there are other sorts that shouldn’t be asked.’

Monika took a cigarette from the packet Berg had left on the table. While she smoked she was silent. When she put the cigarette into the ashtray she asked, ‘What do you think of my aunt?’

‘She seems helpful,’ Berg answered.

‘The trouble with Vera is that she’s a little crazy. She’s been like that ever since her husband died. Still, you’ll find her competent in what she does. She has a book full of testimonials from her previous lodgers.’

Berg looked at his watch. ‘Shouldn’t we walk back now?’

‘Why not?’ Monika rose from the table and looked down at him. ‘We can go back a different way, if you like.’

Outside, they turned into a street that on one side consisted of small grey cottages—too small to live in, Berg thought—and on the other of a row of various kinds of shops. When they reached the corner Monika caught hold of his arm.

‘Would you mind if I took your arm?’

Unwilling to appear impolite, Berg did not answer. But he was acutely conscious of the way she seemed to be imposing herself upon him. She held his arm all the way back to the house, releasing him finally at the front door.

When they were inside she said, ‘Thank you.’

Berg went up to his room and lay down on the bed. He thought briefly of changing his shirt—since he was still wearing the one he had worn on the train—but such a move meant that he would have to open both his suitcases and once open it would be impossible to resist the task of unpacking everything. He decided to wait until after supper, when he could unpack in peace and as slowly as he liked; after which, he would go to bed early.

He smoked a cigarette and noticed that he had almost finished the packet he had bought only that morning. Normally a whole packet lasted three or four days. But his present circumstances were hardly normal. Change, such as the change he had made himself, brought with it different kinds of tension. When he had settled into a new routine the number of cigarettes would drop.

He washed his face and hands before going down to supper.

Four

The dining room looked into a small back garden. When Berg stared out through the window he saw a profusion of wild and tangled grass and clumps of overgrown shrubbery. Several limp items of clothing hung on a length of rope. While he was looking out, wondering to himself why the garden had so obviously gone unattended, Mrs Jacobitz came in from the kitchen carrying a large tureen which she set down on the table. She was sweating heavily and struggling to catch her breath. For a few moments she leaned against the table and her shoulders—rather too wide and heavy for a woman—rose and fell.

After a time she said, ‘I’m so glad that you had an opportunity to speak to Monika. And you must forgive me for failing to tell you about her. Not that she makes any difference to your position in the house. None at all.’

Berg thought about this: what was his position in the house? He was merely the lodger, nothing more.

‘How could it make a difference?’ he asked.

‘Let me put it this way,’ the widow replied. ‘I have a duty to my niece. Well, she’s my own flesh and blood. But that doesn’t mean I have any intention of neglecting my professional duty to you, as my lodger. What I’m trying to say is that there won’t be any favouritism. You only have to compare the helpings of food I give you with those I give to Monika and you’ll see what I mean.’

‘It never entered my mind,’ Berg said.

‘There you are then,’ the widow said. She took the lid from the tureen, stirred whatever was inside, and then closed it again. ‘In a way I’m glad that you had a chance to talk to Monika because she needs—oh, how do I put it?—she needs someone to take her out of herself. She’s a shy girl, you see. But I think she’s basically friendly.’

A shy girl? Berg thought this description misleading. Monika could hardly be called shy. For one thing, hadn’t she come into his room and plumped herself down on his bed? hadn’t she made certain kinds of remarks of the sort that only a forward person would make? and hadn’t she, without his permission, gripped and held his arm for about twenty minutes—almost as if he were her lover? And it was a debatable point whether she could even be called a girl, she was at least thirty-five.

Mrs Jacobitz continued. ‘She hasn’t had what you’d call a very happy life. Both her parents were killed in the war. Her father was taken prisoner and shot. Her dear mother, my sister, was a victim of the bombings. So I had to bring her up like my own daughter. Not that I have any children of my own. But it was always a struggle. She was twenty when she first came here. And there was a romance with a gipsy in a travelling circus. Hardly a circus, really, more a collection of disgusting sideshows, bearded women, two-headed cows, midgets, and that sort of thing. Anyhow, she wanted to marry her gipsy. But what sort of life would that have been for her? Eh? Travelling God knows where in all sorts of weather, getting in with all the wrong kind of people, drinking that cheap gipsy wine. No life at all.’

Berg said, ‘Well, some gipsies are better than others.’

The widow looked at him. She was fidgeting with her necklace, her thick red fingers stroking the plum-shaped beads. ‘Are you saying I should have allowed the marriage? Is that the advice you would have given?’

‘I wouldn’t have advised anything at all,’ Berg said. ‘I was just making the simple point that you can’t really generalise about gipsies in the same way as you can’t generalise about anything.’

‘Then let me tell you that if I’d allowed the marriage she would have come to a pretty bad end. The last I heard of the gipsy he was serving a prison sentence for manslaughter. Manslaughter! That’s only a polite word for murder—and you’re telling me I should have allowed my dear niece, my own flesh and blood, to marry a murderer?’

‘No,’ Berg said, realising that in future he would have to choose his words more carefully in front of the widow if such misunderstandings were to be avoided. And although it occurred to him that if the widow had allowed her niece to marry her gipsy then the manslaughter might never have happened, he simply said, ‘You were probably wise not to allow the match. Very wise.’

‘Of course I was wise. Of course I was.’ The widow stirred the contents of the tureen. ‘But you see how many misfortunes there have been in Monika’s life. She needs to be taken out of herself, that’s all.’

Mrs Jacobitz began to cut up a loaf of bread while Berg thought about the story. No doubt it was true—but so what? He had heard of a hundred similar cases: misfortunes in the war, people going to the front and never returning, their bodies never recovered, people suffering from unhappy love affairs: yet somehow they had managed to survive, to retain something of themselves intact. Why should Monika be any different? Her aunt spoke of her as though she were delicate, a plant that had to be nurtured in a very special way. But this, Berg thought, was far from the truth and it indicated that the widow really knew very little about her own niece.

‘You must be hungry,’ Mrs Jacobitz said.

‘Yes,’ Berg said. He wished that she would serve the food, because his stomach was suddenly painfully empty.

Monika opened the door and came into the room. She looked pale and her eyes were red.

‘Please don’t serve anything for me, aunt Vera. I have another of my migraines.’

‘Well, don’t forget to take two of your tablets.’

‘I think I’ll go straight to bed.’ Monika smiled thinly at Berg. ‘Good night, Mr Berg.’

When she had gone Mrs Jacobitz shrugged.

‘Migraines, you see. She has them once a month. Another little tragedy. She takes tablets, of course, but they don’t help much.’

‘What a pity,’ Berg said, looking at the tureen. Steam was rising from under the lid. He felt desperately hungry now, slightly depressed even. ‘Do you think we might eat now?’

Mrs Jacobitz sighed and began to crack the bones in her fingers. ‘Sometimes I think it isn’t fair. Some people who don’t deserve anything, enjoy life without pain and suffering. Look at poor Monika. Unmarried, well past thirty, she doesn’t deserve such a life. What will become of her when I’m dead?’

Her rhetorical question did not interest Berg much. He was struggling with his acute hunger and wondered if he might reach out and take the lid from the tureen himself. He slid his hand across the table towards it only for Mrs Jacobitz to rap him across the knuckles with the flat blade of a carving knife.

‘Don’t city people have manners?’ she asked.

‘I’m sorry,’ Berg said. His fingers stung from the blow. ‘The fact is, I’d love something to eat.’

After a minute or two—during which time the widow seemed to withdraw into herself in a silent prayer for release from suffering, her eyes closed, her head nodding slightly back and forward—she removed the lid from the tureen and began to dish out a stew of beef and carrots. She piled some on Berg’s plate and then sat back to watch him eat. He raised his fork and tasted: the stew was crude, containing too many herbs and peppers for his liking, and the beef itself was mostly fat, but he was too hungry to be critical. He ate quickly and when he was finished pushed his plate away.

‘Would you like some coffee?’

Berg rose from the table. ‘It keeps me awake at night and since I have to get up early in the morning, I don’t think I will.’

‘As you wish,’ the widow said and began to clear the plates from the table. ‘If I get up in time I’ll prepare some breakfast for you.’

Five

In his own room he started to unpack his suitcases. Most of the small items, like shirts, socks, and underwear, he crammed into the wooden cabinet but there was not enough space for the dark blue suit he intended to wear to the office. In the end he decided to hang it on a peg fixed to the wall beneath the window, although this meant that the bottoms of the trousers touched the floor. It was important, he thought, to present himself for work as smartly as possible; and if he was to make a good impression on Lazlow, a positive impression, then he would have to turn himself out neatly. He hung the suit carefully, spreading an old newspaper on the floor beneath it so that the cuffs of the trousers would not gather dust.

When he had finished unpacking he took off his clothes, set his alarm clock, and climbed into bed. It was just before ten o’clock, early by city standards, but he had to get nine hours’ sleep if he was to rise at seven in the morning. Closing his eyes he allowed the impressions to flit through his mind. Before today Lazlow had simply been a name at the bottom of an official letter and Mrs Jacobitz the woman to whose house he had been assigned. Of Monika he had known nothing, nothing at all.

He turned on his side, away from the window and it was only then, for the first time, that he experienced a sudden and irrational wave of panic. Why was he here? what had he done? Why had he come to an isolated town where he knew no one and was unknown himself? Why had he severed connections with everything that had ever sustained him and given his existence purpose, even if that purpose had become eroded with the passing of time? He sat up in bed and looked at the clock. It was ten-fifteen, the hour when his mother habitually called out for her medicine, and he imagined that he heard her voice ring through the empty apartment, calling to him, demanding that he fill a glass with water and fetch the tablets. He bit his lip and buried his face into the pillow, like a child who is suddenly aware of being lost and of darkness inexorably falling.

He looked round the room. There were shadows he had never seen before. He thought again of his mother and envisaged her lying in her bed, the bedside table littered with the various tablets and liquids that sustained her. He saw her plump white hand gather up a pill to her open mouth, to the flicking tongue that conveyed it to the darkness of her throat. But he knew that she suffered only from the maladies of her imagination: she had to be sick, because otherwise life was meaningless. And because she made herself suffer he had suffered too—from the infelicities of her whim, from the night calls to attend non-existent pains, from the demands to hold her hand while imagined spasms passed. He sighed and lay down. It was all in the past, all of it: by leaving her and coming to this place he had broken free. There was no need to panic. Since she did not even know where he was she could not touch him now. And if she had controlled his life, if she had exploited his sense of duty towards her, then he was free of her now.

He concentrated on the sound of the clock. He was sweating badly. His vest stuck to his flesh. When he slept his dream as usual was filled with the sound of birds, exotic birds that rose up noisily from nowhere, their wings tearing the air with a sound that grew to some terrible climax that he had never witnessed because he always forced himself awake.

He listened to the sound of the clock. He was in control of himself again. He did not have to think of his mother. And even if he did, he at least knew that he was free, that he was his own man.

Six

‘You will sit at that desk,’ Lazlow said. He had shown Berg into a small room with barred windows. It was a room that disappointed Berg who had expected something more comfortable and less bare. It contained minimal office equipment: a dilapidated filing cabinet and two desks, one of which carried a typewriter and a box of paper.

‘You share the room with Miss Selz, my typist,’ Lazlow said. He directed Berg to the desk without the typewriter. ‘I’d prefer you to have an office of your own, naturally, but our space is limited at the moment. In time, perhaps … You will find Miss Selz helpful because she knows the routine, but when you encounter any real difficulties I expect you to seek my advice.’

Berg was unwilling to seat himself in Lazlow’s presence, because it was too early to say whether he was the sort of man who observed formalities rigidly and it was best to be on the safe side. He picked up a pencil from his desk and turned it round in his fingers.

‘Miss Selz comes from an outlying village, so she often doesn’t begin promptly at eight. Her starting time depends largely on transport. Train timetables are notoriously fallible. I’m only telling you this because you might think she’s a persistent latecomer.’

‘Of course,’ Berg said.

Lazlow paced up and down the office, seemingly deep in thought. His bald head shone in the very feeble light that fell between the bars and the legs of his steel spectacles glinted. After a time he stopped by the filing cabinet and removed a file, almost at random.

‘All the information you require is contained in these files,’ he said. ‘They contain the names of the companies who supply us with materials, and the dates of our original orders. Sometimes you’ll find that a certain supplier has failed to deliver on time, in which case you send them one of our printed reminders. Miss Selz will tell you where to find them. You also make a carbon copy of the reminder, which Miss Selz brings to my attention.’

Lazlow passed the file to Berg who opened it and looked inside. It contained hundreds of sheets of paper, both invoices and order.

‘That particular file is for a company who supply us with metal tubes. They always deliver on time so you won’t have any difficulty with them.’

Berg flicked through the sheets of paper, nodding his head diligently. Lazlow began to walk up and down the room again.

‘As I said, if you have a quick eye and a sharp brain you can’t go wrong.’

‘I think you’ll find that I have those qualities,’ Berg said, and hoped that his remark would not be interpreted as a boast.

‘I think so too,’ Lazlow said and walked to the door. ‘I’m always available if you have any questions.’

When he was alone, Berg sat down and placed his hands firmly on the surface of his desk. Naturally it was disappointing to share a room with Lazlow’s typist, but if he did well at the work—which seemed, on the face of it, to be extremely simple—then no doubt he would be given an office of his own eventually. At least he had his own telephone, something Miss Selz did not have on her desk: there, at least, his superiority over her was quite clear.

The view from the window was something else that did not exactly please him. There was a grey stone wall, along which ran a metal water pipe. Above the wall it was just possible to see a fragment of sky, but he had to twist his neck to look at it. Anyway, he would not have time to stare out of the window: this was quite clearly a busy office, and he would not have an idle moment.

Experimentally, he reached out and picked up his telephone. Almost at once he heard a voice on the other end of the line.

‘Site Agent speaking.’

Surprised at being connected without even having dialled a number, Berg did not know what to say. Besides, he was nervous at hearing the voice of someone so obviously important as the Site Agent.

‘Site Agent—is that you, Lazlow?’

‘No. This is Berg.’

‘Who? Berg? Never heard of you.’

‘I’m the new man,’ Berg said.

‘What new man?’

Berg stared at the window, frantically trying to think of something to say.

‘What do you want?’ the Agent asked. ‘I haven’t got time to waste, I never have time for anything.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Berg said. ‘I didn’t mean to ring you——’

He tried to explain what had happened but the Agent had already rung off. Berg put the telephone down and stared at it. He realised then that the telephone did not connect him to the outside world—in the sense that he could dial any number he chose—but that whenever he lifted it he was automatically connected to the Site Agent, who quite clearly did not like being summoned pointlessly. Berg wrung his hands together: an error so soon. He got up from the desk and walked to the filing cabinet, a matter of some five paces. He opened the top drawer and flicked through the files and as he was doing this a girl of about twenty came in. Breathlessly she removed her scarf and threw it down over her typewriter.

‘You must be Berg. Welcome Berg, to the pit.’

‘The pit?’ Berg asked. He looked at the girl, a little annoyed that she had called him by his second name without the courtesy of ‘Mr’.

‘That damned train,’ she said. ‘It arrives at a different time every morning. Sometimes early, sometimes late. Never on time. You don’t know where you stand with it.’

She took off her coat as she talked, hung it at a peg on the wall near her desk, and then sat down.

‘You’re Miss Selz, I take it,’ Berg said.

‘You don’t have to be formal,’ Miss Selz said. ‘You can call me by my first name. Irma. After all, we’re going to be working in this rat-hole together, so there’s no need for stiffness and politeness, is there?’

Berg watched her light a cigarette. He did not know what to say at first. He sat down at his desk. Her yellow hair was black at the roots and she wore a great deal of lipstick, applied thickly and with little expertise.

‘I hope we get on together,’ she said.

‘So do I,’ Berg answered.

‘You’ll find me easy-going, though I might as well warn you now that although I don’t mind the odd joke or two, I don’t stand for any nonsense.’

Nonsense? Berg wondered. Miss Selz began to hammer something out on her typewriter and didn’t speak to him again for some time. He flicked through some more files, taking notes, and wondered when his work was going to begin in earnest. It was quite likely that Lazlow would allow him two or three days to understand how things functioned and to get to know the nature of the work at the Site. If so, then he would simply read carefully through the files for a start, to acquaint himself with the names of the suppliers and their materials.

Miss Selz stopped typing and lit another cigarette.

‘You don’t object if I smoke, do you, Berg? I have to smoke to keep sane. It isn’t much fun sitting here day after day typing boring letters and memos, is it?’

‘If you’re bored, why do you stay?’ Berg asked, surprised a little at hearing her speak so openly of her discontent.

‘Why not? One job’s much the same as any other.’

‘Couldn’t you find something a little less tedious?’

Miss Selz smiled. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’

Berg thought for a moment. She was a young girl, certainly, which perhaps explained the tedium she found in her work and the frankness with which she announced it. After all, she was not to know that he might consider it a duty to pass this information on to Lazlow.

‘What about you?’ Miss Selz asked. ‘Surely this sort of post isn’t going to make you wild with excitement, is it? After a week or two you’ll be bored to death with those files and invoices.’

‘I hope not,’ Berg said. ‘I hope I find it interesting.’ As he looked at her, it occurred to him that perhaps she was testing him, for all that he knew, Lazlow might have briefed her to find out something about his attitudes, in the hope that it might be discovered whether he was a worthy employee and a candidate for future promotion. It wasn’t beyond possibility: all sorts of methods were used in offices to ascertain the calibre of people. He said simply, ‘I want to do my work well. I want to make a good job of things here.’

Miss Selz smiled and returned to her typewriter, while Berg continued reading the files. At ten o’clock she stopped, opened her bag, and took out some bread and cheese.

‘Would you like something to eat?’

Berg, who had last eaten at a quarter past seven when Mrs Jacobitz, in her nightgown, had served him coffee and bread fried in lard, received the offer gratefully. He took a piece of bread and slice of cheese.

‘Have you been here long?’ he asked.

‘About a year.’

‘Do you get on well with Mr Lazlow?’

‘Like a house on fire,’ the typist replied, in such a way that Berg could not tell if she were being sarcastic. She asked; ‘You came here from the capital, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’

‘I’ve always wanted to go there. What’s it like?’

‘Like any other city.’

‘I’ve never been in any city. I wish I had done some travelling. They say it broadens your outlook.’

‘It’s expensive to live in the capital,’ Berg said.

‘Is that why you left?’

‘It was one of the reasons.’

Miss Selz yawned and stretched her arms. She had small pointed breasts that were accentuated by the stretching movement. She wrapped away what was left of the bread and cheese and then started to type again. Berg resumed his reading of the files, memorising as much as he could. It was a monotonous task. At half past twelve Miss Selz turned to him.

‘Did you bring any lunch with you?’

‘I thought I might go to the café along the street.’

‘It isn’t exactly pleasant in there. I bring my lunch with me.’

Berg started to replace the files. Then, suddenly curious, he asked, ‘Can you tell me about the Site?’

Miss Selz did not reply at once. From her bag she took several apples and a glass jar that contained sour cream. These she placed on her desk and began to polish the apples with a tissue.

‘Hasn’t Lazlow told you anything about the Site?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything. It’s up to him to give you that sort of information.’

‘Why? Is it a matter of security?’

Miss Selz bit one of her apples. ‘Sorry, Berg. I can’t answer any questions like that.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’ Berg asked. He leaned against the filing cabinet, surprised that she refused to answer what was, after all, a simple question. But if security were involved, why didn’t she say so? In that case, he would ask no more questions. He was also surprised that he had not been told anything by Lazlow, although this was perhaps understandable if the Site involved security: he was a new man and could not be entrusted with classified information.

Miss Selz spat a ribbon of indigestible peel into the palm of her hand and smothered it with a piece of tissue paper.

‘Don’t you think—since I work here—that I ought to know just what’s going on?’ Berg asked.

‘You’ll find out all you want in time,’ the typist said, staring at a newspaper she had opened. ‘But not from me. Ask Lazlow.’

Berg got to his feet and went outside. It was a warm sunless day and the town seemed absolutely still. He walked along the street to the café, went inside, and waited for someone to take his order. There were no other customers apart from himself. While he waited he noticed that his hands were slightly trembling and within himself he felt a rising sense of excitement. One thing was clear to him: whatever went on at the Site was shrouded in secrecy. That was quite beyond doubt. Otherwise, either Lazlow or the girl—who was talkative by nature—would have told him. And this thought excited him for he had never dreamed that he would be connected in any way with matters of security—and even if his position was a lowly one at least it was far more important than he had realised. It gave an added dimension to the mundane tasks he had to undertake in the office and it meant that he could tell no one—neither Mrs Jacobitz nor her niece—about the nature of his work. He could call himself a clerk and leave it at that, and if they asked he would elude their questions.

‘Are you going to order?’

Berg looked up to see a man in a greasy apron standing beside the table.

‘What have you got?’ Berg asked.

‘Pork, stuffed peppers, sausages, pressed boar’s head—take your pick.’

‘The pork, I think.’

The man went through a door and into another room, leaving Berg alone again. For one mad moment he experienced the strong urge to write to his mother, telling her about the kind of work he was doing—but it was a pointless urge that would only bring him trouble. If she were to discover where he lived she would flood him with tearful letters, bogus medical certificates (she paid a private physician to put his signature to any outrageous malady), telegrams proclaiming her various illnesses, and possibly even an invitation to her funeral—and he could not stand such a circus of miseries again. No, he could not write to his mother: it was a stupid idea.

The waiter returned with a plate of pork and boiled potatoes.

‘You’ll find the pork tough,’ he said casually. ‘And if you don’t mind me saying, I suspect the pig was diseased.’

Berg watched the man retreat to the inner room before he picked up his knife and fork and started to eat. When he had finished he put some money on the table and went out. The meal had been tasteless, although it had satisfied his appetite.

Miss Selz was chewing her last apple when he returned.

‘By the way, Berg, Mr Lazlow wants to see you at four o’clock.

Seven

Promptly at four Berg entered Lazlow’s office. Lazlow, hands behind his back, was standing at the window, staring into the street. He turned round and told Berg to sit.

‘Now that your first day is almost over, how do you find things?’

Berg did not quite understand the question, partly because of the ambiguity of the word ‘things’. He coughed and cleared his throat and could only say in the end, ‘Very well, thank you.’

‘Good,’ Lazlow said, and went to his desk where he placed the palms of his hands firmly against the wooden surface. Berg noticed that there wasn’t a single scrap of paper anywhere on the desk. ‘First days, of course, are always difficult. It’s a case of getting used to the various ways we have of doing things. Our bureaucratic system, you might say.’

It was on the tip of Berg’s tongue to ask about the Site: but how could he, without being presumptuous, without putting Lazlow into the false position of having to answer the question or ignore it entirely?

‘And do you find Irma Selz helpful?’

‘Up to a point,’ Berg said.

‘That’s exactly how it should be. Do you know that she’s the fastest typist in the district? I’m telling you this because you might wonder why I tolerate her continual lateness of arrival. Why don’t I employ a girl from the town? The fact is, I’ve never seen a better typist.’

‘I had noticed her speed,’ Berg said.

Lazlow clasped his hands together and then, slowly, removed his spectacles. He breathed on the lenses, rubbed them with a handkerchief, and then returned them to his face.

‘Now I’m afraid I have to reprimand you. I know that allowances have to be made since this is your first day here, but I am informed that you telephoned the Site Agent at ten minutes past eight this morning. And that you did so without reason. Is that true?’

‘It was an accident,’ Berg said.

‘An accident? I don’t think I understand that. Would you explain?’ Lazlow took a cigarette from his jacket and put it down on the centre of his desk as if to tempt himself.

‘You see, I picked up the telephone quite without thinking. To my surprise, I found myself connected to the Site Agent. I didn’t expect to be connected to anyone, because I hadn’t dialled a number.’ Berg licked his dry lips and felt awkward and nervous: how do you explain a foolish action?

‘But why did you pick up the telephone in the first place? Did you simply want to test the equipment? Or did you have other motives?’

‘I picked it up just to get the feel of the object.’ How feeble that sounded, Berg thought: almost as if he were a peasant who had never before seen a telephone. But what other explanation could he give? He couldn’t possibly examine the motives behind every single move he made.

‘Let me get this straight,’ Lazlow said. ‘You had no information to give him. You expected none from him. You had no ulterior motives, like wanting to make a long distance telephone call without paying for it. So—you picked up the telephone out of sheer curiosity.’

‘Out of curiosity, that’s right.’

‘I must ask you to appreciate one thing, Berg. The Site Agent is a busy man. He is the busiest man I’ve ever met. Even I have second thoughts about ringing him. In future I must ask you to be very careful. You will have to consult me prior to any telephone call you might want to make to him. Is that clear?’

‘Yes,’ Berg said, feeling suddenly ashamed of himself.

Lazlow rose from his desk and returned to the window. With his back to Berg he said, ‘We have to clarify matters like this from the very start. Misunderstandings can be painful.’

After a moment’s silence Berg realised that the interview—for want of a better word—was at an end. He went out of the room. He was more than ashamed, he was irritated by his own stupidity. Yet he could not help feeling that to some extent he had been a victim of ignorance. How could he have known that by the simple act of picking up the telephone he was automatically connected to the Site Agent? How could he have known that the telephone was not used to dial outside numbers? But even with these justifications he was annoyed at himself, partly because he had behaved so thoughtlessly and partly because he had not defended himself more strongly in front of Lazlow. What would Lazlow think of him now? As a man unfit to hold responsibility? As a man unsuited to promotion? As a fool?

Miss Selz was fixing her scarf into position.

‘That’s another day. What sort of lodgings have they given you?’

‘I’m staying with a Mrs Jacobitz,’ Berg said and sat down. He stared miserably at the blank wall outside. At the joint in the metal pipe a drip of rust-coloured water had formed.

‘Mrs Jacobitz? She’s the one who has her niece living with her, isn’t she?’

‘Do you know them?’

‘Not personally,’ Miss Selz said, gathering her belongings together. ‘But I’ve heard of them.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘Nothing very interesting. See you in the morning, Berg.’

When he was alone Berg stared at the wall until the globule of water had slipped from the pipe and another one had begun to form. He then turned his eyes on the accursed telephone, seized by a sudden impulse to pick it up and say something—anything, anything at all—to the Site Agent. His hand, of its own accord, wandered to the instrument before he drew it back to his side. What lunacy it would be to repeat the mistake. He felt depressed and a little tired. Depressed by the incident and tired by a day that had seemed unnaturally long, a day in which he had done no real work at all. He consoled himself with the thought that he was unlikely to make any more mistakes and that once his work had started in earnest things would be very different.

He left the office and went out to the street. On the opposite corner a man was leaning against the wall of a house, reading a newspaper. He dropped the paper an inch or so and looked across at Berg for a second, before raising the paper again. For some reason, Berg had the odd idea that this man was watching him. He walked to the next corner and looked back and as he turned thought he saw a movement of the paper—as if the man had again been scrutinising him. But Berg could not be sure. If he were being watched, what reason could there be, unless it was mere curiosity. Or unless—an idea that came to him in a flash—unless he had been detailed to observe Berg’s movements, to check on him as a possible security risk. This idea, on reflection, was fatuous. A face behind a newspaper was so blatant as to be absurd: surely security people used more sophisticated techniques?

On the next corner, Berg glanced back again. But by this time the man was nowhere to be seen. Berg turned off the main road and walked back towards the house. A deep depression that he was unable to shake off had fallen upon him.

Eight

Mrs Jacobitz came into his room without knocking, which he thought ill-mannered. She looked round the room, no doubt checking to see that nothing had been broken or lost.

‘How was your first day at work?’

‘Very interesting,’ he said.

The widow sat on the bed, swinging her legs back and forward. There were holes in her stockings, some of which had been darned; but where there were no darns, Berg could see the thick blue veins protrude from her white flesh.

‘I can remember when my husband first started work. He came home from the front just after the first war. He left the house one morning with a brand new axe. A beautiful thing. Soft wood and a head of gleaming metal.’

Berg looked out of the window. He was in no mood to listen to the widow’s reminiscences, but he turned to look at her and smiled politely nevertheless.

‘When he came back his hands were sore and bleeding a bit. I had to bathe them in spirits.’

Berg nodded absently, still thinking about the scene with Lazlow. The depression had settled upon him heavily and even the exciting possibility that his work brought him into contact with classified information, even the thought that he was being watched, checked upon as a security risk, failed to arouse him from the mood. In the past when he had been depressed he had always gone to his mother who consoled him, who knew exactly how to soothe his various fits and moods, and who never failed him unless she were undergoing one of her own moments of anguish or groundless fears of approaching death.

Mrs Jacobitz got up from the bed and stood a foot or so in front of him. She put her hand out and touched his wrist.

‘We never had any children. We always meant to, but he would say wait—wait until I’m something better than a woodman, something my children can be proud of. But he was never anything better than a woodman in the end. And he was stupid enough to eat those toadstools. I wanted children. Very badly.’

Berg was slightly touched by this speech, which was delivered in a soft voice, almost a whisper. Any resentment he felt against the widow dissolved at once. And suddenly it was clear that it was on account of this tragic childlessness she had harboured her niece.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

The widow removed her hand and walked to the other side of the room. Whether she heard him express his sympathy he couldn’t tell, because she was examining a spot on the floor.

‘Is that cigarette ash?’ she asked. ‘Is it?’

Startled by the sudden change in her tone, Berg said, ‘It might be.’

‘Why don’t you use an ashtray? Would you treat your own home with such contempt?’

‘There isn’t an ashtray,’ he said.

‘People just don’t care for property that isn’t their own. Would you flick dirt over your own floor? Would you muddy up your own carpets? Haven’t you got any respect for the possessions of other people?’

Berg walked to the table. The rapidity of her questions staggered him. He opened his mouth to reply but the widow raised her hand to silence him.

‘Is that ash yours or is it not? If it isn’t yours then it must be someone else’s, and you know that you aren’t allowed visitors in your room.’

Berg sat down. ‘I didn’t know about that rule, I assure you. Not that I’ve had any visitors.’

Mrs Jacobitz stood at the door and cracked the bones in her fingers. ‘I don’t know. You come here from the capital with the manners of a pig. What do they teach you down there? They don’t teach good manners, whatever else they do.’

Berg fumbled for his cigarettes. How could she be so unreasonable, so changeable? Innocently he had spilled ash on the floor—it wasn’t a sin. ‘There isn’t an ashtray,’ he said. ‘If you supplied an ashtray——’

‘And another thing while we’re on the subject. You banged the front door going out this morning and again when you came back. You’ll break every pane of glass doing that. Is that what you want? Do you want to smash the glass?’

Berg did not attempt to answer her this time. She seemed not to listen in any case; further talk was futile. And on the rare occasion when she paid attention she completely misunderstood him. What more could he do but remain in total silence? If he could not communicate it wasn’t his fault, but hers—that she chose to ignore every point he made in his own defence. He closed his eyes: perhaps by doing so she would simply go away. He opened them again when he heard her turn the handle of the door.

‘Supper is at seven. Don’t be late.’

He heard her go slowly down the stairs. When at last there was silence he lay down on the bed. He badly needed a policy to deal with the widow and her idiosyncrasies if life was to be tolerable. Perhaps he could bring her a gift; perhaps he could try flattery at which he had never been very good because he hadn’t the trick of sounding sincere. What should he do? He smoked his cigarette and thought that if she were totally beyond reason then any sort of tactic was pointless: like trying to steer a sinking ship through a fog. Anyway, if the worst came to the worst he could find different accommodation. His room left a lot to be desired and even the cooking was deplorable. Bread fried in lard for breakfast!

He was still lying there, thinking of the widow, when Monika came into the room. He raised his head to look at her, relieved that Mrs Jacobitz had not returned.

‘I heard Vera through the wall. She was going on at you. I told you she was a bit mad.’

Monika moved closer to the bed and then sat down near him, her buttocks almost touching the soles of his feet. He sat up immediately.

‘The great thing is to agree with everything she says.’

‘I can assure you that I’ll simply ignore whatever she says,’ Berg answered. He lit another cigarette and let the smoke drift casually from his mouth. ‘She doesn’t worry me at all.’

Monika gathered up the end of the patchwork quilt and began to stroke it like the fur of an animal. ‘She can have a terrible effect on some people. I’ve known lodgers to leave within a week. I hope you won’t vanish so soon.’

Berg openly flicked his ash on the floor. He wondered what Monika did to pass the time during the day. Although she had said nothing, he assumed that she didn’t go out to work. But if she stayed at home, what did she do all the time? She was no longer wearing the black dress he had seen the day before: she had on a red skirt and a white blouse of a transparent material, through which he could see the folds of her flesh. A strong smell of scent rose from her, seeming strangely not to originate from any single point of her body but to come instead from every part of her. But that, he realised, was a ridiculous thought. Besides, what was he doing—staring at her skin, analysing her perfume? If he carried on like this he would soon begin to imagine her lying in the arms of her gipsy: another absurd idea. He walked across the room and dropped his cigarette from the window.

‘Do you work?’ he asked.

‘I sometimes do seasonal work, like harvesting. But this year I decided to help aunt Vera because you were arriving.’

‘Somehow I didn’t imagine you doing agricultural work.’

‘How did you imagine me?’

‘Possibly I thought you might be a typist.’

‘A typist! I can hardly even spell.’

Berg turned to look at her. She had crossed her legs and the skirt had risen to her thighs. She seemed unconscious of this, although she might well have been aware of the fact that he could see the tops of her legs only by looking in that direction. There was something about her that reminded him of—what? was it a whore? It was her openness, the way she seemed not to care about delicate things—like showing her thighs, like holding his arm as if they were on intimate terms, like entering his room and sitting on his bed. A whore, not a typist: that was how he imagined her, even if he could not say so.

‘Did you enjoy your first day at work?’

‘It was interesting and challenging,’ he said. Suddenly he wanted to tell her about the injustice of Lazlow’s reprimand, but he remained silent.

As if she had read his mind she said, ‘If you ever want to talk to me about anything, I’m always available.’

‘Talk to you about what?’ he asked, a little surpised.

‘Anything. Your life, what you hope for, love … Anything at all.’

Berg did not know what to say to this offer and it occurred to him that perhaps she used the word ‘talk’ euphemistically—just as a whore plying her trade might ask for a ‘match’. He sat at the table and drummed his fingers.

‘It’s very kind of you, but I don’t really want to talk to you or anyone else for that matter. I like to think of myself as independent.’ He clenched his hand to stop his fingers rattling against the table. In the silence that followed, he realised that she was thinking how pompous he had sounded. But what did that matter? He didn’t need to justify himself in front of her. Why had he fled the city and his mother, if not for independence? No, even if the remark seemed harsh, even if she took it as a snub, he would not withdraw it.

She was standing now by the bed, her arms at her side. Her mouth was open, but she said nothing. Berg went to the window. What was it about her presence that seemed stifling? Something more than the sound of her blouse against her skin and the smell of her perfume, something that seemed to come from within her and threaten him. He had never visited a whore but he imagined that the inside of a brothel would have the same suffocating effect upon him.

He turned round to look at her. She was standing with her legs apart, smiling, and it seemed to him—although he could not be certain—that the smile contained an element of pity for him. But it was surely for him to pity her, if there was to be pity at all. A woman of her age, deprived of her lover, living alone with an erratic aunt, conscious of her years and her fading attractions: a woman who came to his room as if to tempt him—surely such a woman was to be pitied?

‘I must help Vera with the supper,’ she said.

He watched her go from the room and then, when she had gone, he stared for a time at the door.

Nine

He stared for a time at the door, wondering about the woman. It was possible, of course, that he had misjudged her entirely and that he mistook her friendliness for something else altogether. Or rather that the motives behind her apparent desire to befriend him were basically suspect. Did she, in fact, want him to make love to her?

This question seemed to hang in his mind for some time, an obstacle that he could not think his way round. If she wanted him to make love to her—and it was pretty clear, he thought, from her behaviour that she did—then he would have to examine himself and his own desires thoroughly. What did he want? If she were to come to his room and offer herself, like some sacrifice, how would he react? He realised that he didn’t know the answer, that he couldn’t predict the outcome, that if the sacrifice were offered he wouldn’t know whether to accept or refuse. And if he accepted? What then?

He looked out of the window and down into the street. Part of the trouble lay in his inexperience. Apart from his mother—and she could hardly be counted—he hadn’t known any women. At university his acquaintances had drifted from one love affair to the next, blindly, as if they were groping after something. To Berg, this was a puzzle: he had stood outside the carnival and looked on, conscious of the bewilderment of the participants, aware at the same time that he himself lacked whatever dynamism was needed to take part.

Apart from his mother: but there had been nothing apart from his mother. For most of his life she had been the centre of his universe, if not the universe itself. Like some unwilling satellite he had circled her sick bed, her endless sick bed, not waiting for her to die but waiting for something in himself to snap—his mind, his nerve, his will: he could not name it, whatever it was. It had something to do with the women he had watched; women in cheap furs hustling their clients up dark staircases into wooden rooms, baring their purple thighs beneath a blind light-bulb. Whatever it was, it had something to do with this act, an act that he had witnessed a million times in his imagination.

His mother was the obstacle to his life, the locked door that prevented his exit from the room to those other rooms where he could detect the faint sound of laughter. The rooms beyond that he wanted badly to enter—while he waited for that particular something to snap. Having snapped, he could no longer be imprisoned in that unending round of prescriptions and tablets, demands and whims, in that sick imagination.

His mother: his only relationship with a woman.

He smoked a cigarette and looked round the room. He could not even decide if he found Monika attractive: partly because he could not find in himself any response to her, as if that faculty for response had been numbed, or worse still, deadened. He imagined that she had had many lovers, perhaps even here, in this room: perhaps on that very bed. A whole procession of men, lodgers like himself, that she had tried as though to find one to take the gipsy’s place. He could see her on the bed, waiting for him to move towards her, calling his name softly: Berg, Berg.

What could he do? What was expected of him?

He looked at the unfamiliar room. Compared with what he had been used to, it was the drabbest place he had ever seen. Even its shadows seemed uncompromising, stark, without texture. He lay down and closed his eyes: at least the room was his and not his mother’s.

Ten

For supper that evening they had the cold remains of yesterday’s stew, which made Berg indignant. It wasn’t as if he was a charity case living off the widow’s good intentions, in which circumstances cold stew might have been justifiable. He was paying money to live and eat in the house and he expected to get what he paid for; and he certainly hadn’t paid for cold leftovers. Besides, the bread was stale and his coffee cup cracked. He was about to say something about this when Monika spoke.

‘There’s a film in the cinema you might like to see.’

Berg wondered if she was recommending the film for its own sake, or whether she wanted to accompany him.

‘I’m sure Mr Berg has already seen it,’ the widow said. ‘They take such a long time to reach us up here.’

‘It’s about the war,’ Monika said.

The widow asked: ‘Which war? The last one?’

‘What does it matter?’ Monika said. ‘I think it’s nice just to sit in the dark, regardless of what film’s showing.’

‘I don’t know if war films have any lasting benefits.’ The widow dipped her fingers in a glass of water and dried them on her apron. She began to crack the bones, just as someone might smack his lips appreciatively after a good meal.

‘Benefits,’ Monika said. ‘It’s the chance to be transported for a few hours, that’s all. It’s got nothing to do with benefits.’ She turned to look at Berg. ‘Would you like to see the film?’

Berg experienced a sour taste in his mouth as the meal returned to him. There was a moment of nausea, during which he felt he would be forced to rush from the room and vomit. He glanced at his plate, at the black lumps of beef, thick with hard fat.

‘Well?’ Monika asked. ‘Would you like to go?’

The sickness rising in him, Berg could only blink. To open his mouth would be disastrous. He pushed the plate away and raised a hand to his lips.

‘Can’t you see he doesn’t want to go?’ the widow said. ‘Who wants to see war films anyway?’

Berg wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. He noticed that Monika was leaning on her elbows, the tips of her breasts touching the surface of the table. For a moment, he saw what they would be like naked.

‘I don’t feel very well,’ he said.

‘Then an evening at the cinema will cure you,’ Monika said.

The thought of sitting beside her in the dark did not appeal to him: in the darkness, he would have no protection against her. What if she seized his hand? if she placed her head on his shoulder? if she tried to kiss him? He could hardly object without causing a scene.

‘Perhaps some other evening,’ he said. ‘I don’t think sitting in a stuffy cinema will make me feel any better.’

‘Tomorrow then, if you’re feeling better,’ Monika said, and Berg thought he detected a note of disappointment in her voice. She was staring at him, accusingly, reproaching him for refusing her. He looked down at the table. Again, he found himself looking at the remains of his supper, a sight so disgusting that he felt obliged to speak. He cleared his throat, not knowing what he was going to say.

‘I’d like to say something, but I want to assure you, Mrs Jacobitz, that I don’t mean to give offence. Tonight’s meal was … well, perfectly disgusting. In fact, I’ve never tasted anything so bad in my whole life. It might be the custom in this part of the country to serve the remains of the previous day’s supper, but I’m not used to it. And since I’m paying money to live here, I think I’m entitled to better.’

Berg paused to see how the widow was taking it. Cracking her fingers, and staring into space, she gave the impression that she was not altogether listening. He had been prepared for some sort of outraged reaction, because he knew what her temperament was like. But she sat in silence and said nothing. Monika, on the other hand, was staring at him intently, but whether she was interested in his speech he couldn’t tell.

He continued. ‘I’m within my rights to speak in this direct way. After all, the money I pay for my lodgings is money I have to earn. And why should I squander hard-earned money on the garbage I’ve been served tonight? When I say garbage I mean it. If there isn’t an improvement, and if I don’t get value for money, then I’ll just have to look for other accommodation. I’m not a difficult person, but I like fresh food freshly cooked. That’s all I ask for.’

He sat down and waited for the widow to say something. From the corner of his eye he noticed that Monika was laughing into her hand. Suddenly, in the silence, he felt a rush of blood to his head: why didn’t the widow speak? Why was Monika sniggering? Had they both misunderstood his speech?

Mrs Jacobitz rose after a moment and began to gather the dirty dishes.

‘In the old days, you know, we used to say grace before and after meals. But these are godless times. Totally godless.’ She took the heap of dishes to the kitchen, leaving Berg and Monika alone.

‘Why didn’t she say something?’ Berg asked at once. ‘Why?’

‘I’m sorry I laughed at you,’ Monika said. ‘You looked so absurd giving your little speech that I couldn’t help it——’

She raised her hand to her mouth and laughed again—and Berg, who felt that his direct question demanded a direct answer, was irritated.

‘I feel sick,’ he said. ‘Sick.’

He went out of the room and climbed the stairs. He was positive that the widow had heard him and had understood—unless she was totally insane, in which case she had no right to manage a lodging house. But if she had understood, why had she just ignored it? Had she made up her mind to ignore things she just didn’t want to hear? And why had Monika robbed his speech of any dignity, by sniggering so childishly into her hand?

In his own room he felt a recurrence of the nausea and although he wrapped his head in a wet towel and stuck a finger down his throat, he brought nothing up. He lay down: beyond his closed eyes, the room was spinning. Behind his eyes he experienced continual images of the cold stew—black lumps, thick and dreadful, congealed in their own grease.

Eleven

Vaguely Lazlow gestured towards a chair and Berg sat down. Lazlow stood at the window for a time, looking out. A lorry went past with several sleeping soldiers huddled together in the back, and then a horse and cart driven by a farmer whose face was muffled in a black scarf.

‘I don’t enjoy keeping you in a state of ignorance,’ Lazlow said.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Berg answered.

‘I’m talking about the Site and the fact that you haven’t been told what goes on there.’

Berg waited in silence: was this the moment? Every nerve in his body had become suddenly tense; he felt like a man about to be initiated into some divine and secret rite.

‘You’re not a fool, Berg. You must have wondered about the Site. No doubt you’ve come to the conclusion that what goes on there is a matter of some security. No doubt, too, you’ve felt it to be an oversight on my part that I haven’t informed you.’

Berg said, ‘I didn’t like to mention the subject.’

Lazlow sat down. The lenses of his spectacles were clouded by a reflection of light, making it difficult for Berg to observe his eyes.

‘I’d like very much to tell you the truth. To put you in the picture completely. Nothing would give me greater pleasure.’ Lazlow laid his hands on the desk. Even the customary cigarette—the temptation—was missing. ‘This morning I received a directive from above. Directives, as you know, are crosses we have to bear. The one that reached me this morning instructs me to tell you that on no account are you to learn of the business at the Site.’

Disappointed, Berg sighed: he felt suddenly weak as the sense of anticipation evaporated. ‘I don’t understand. Why can’t I be told?’

‘I’m not sure. There may be many reasons. My directive didn’t say. But one possibility is that your background is being scrutinised. Such things take time, as you know. Another may be that they’ve discovered something in your past—some trifle—that makes them hesitate in letting you know too much. Naturally, they have to be extremely careful in a matter as delicate as this one.’

‘But don’t you think I have a right to know?’

Lazlow looked grim. ‘Let’s not start talking about rights. There’s no telling where that sort of talk can lead. No, I’ve been given an instruction but I haven’t been given any reasons.’

Berg looked at his hands. A film of sweat had formed between the fingers. His heart was pounding against his ribs in a way that must have been audible to Lazlow in the silent room.

‘You know that I travelled a long way to take up this post,’ he said. ‘I want to make my career here. But how can I expect to advance if I’m kept in the dark?’

‘Believe me, Berg, I sympathise. But instructions are instructions. If they’re not ready to tell you, then that’s that. When they are ready, whenever that might be, then you’ll learn all you want to know.’

‘But that might take weeks, months,’ Berg said.

Lazlow shrugged and looked impatient. ‘We’re dealing with bureaucracy. How can I tell how long it will take? It might be months. Even years. Who knows?’

Berg gazed at the floor. Already he had spent five days, five dreary days, shut in his office with nothing but Miss Selz, a cabinet of files, and a silent telephone, and the one thing that had sustained him was the prospect of learning what was happening at the Site. Five dead days, a strange mixture of boredom and anticipation—and now this.

‘It’s absurd,’ he said. ‘It’s outrageous.’

Lazlow got up. ‘Let me remind you that your post here is a junior one. Your career has hardly begun. Yet you talk as though you had some rights. Let me give you some advice. So long as one learns not to speak out of turn, it is possible to travel far in one’s career.’

Berg wondered if he had gone too far. Had he overstepped the mark? Had he offended Lazlow? If he had it could put his whole position in jeopardy—and then what? Jobs weren’t easy to find, unless you worked in the fields or in a factory.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I spoke out of turn.’

‘Remember in future,’ Lazlow said. ‘And be patient.’

Berg stood up to leave. When he got to the door, Lazlow said, ‘There is, however, one thing that you might like to do. If you feel that you have a real grievance, and only if you feel that you have, you can make an official complaint. You will have to state your case in a hundred words. You will have to demonstrate as succinctly as possible why you feel that the information being withheld from you is essential to your work. If you like, I’ll let you have the official form.’

Berg stopped in the doorway. ‘What happens then?’

‘After you’ve completed the form it goes through the usual channels and eventually it is dealt with. Again, this takes time. By the time your complaint is actually dealt with you may already have been given the information you want.’

Lazlow opened his desk and took out a sheet of paper which he handed to Berg.

‘Is this the official complaints form?’ Berg asked.

Lazlow nodded. ‘Before you decide to take this step, I think I should point out that it’s possible, just possible, your complaint might upset someone in the hierarchy. They can be very, touchy, you know. Put yourself in their position. A junior clerk, someone who has only just joined the organisation, has the sheer gall to put in an official complaint. Now, they might not like that. On the other hand, I might be over-pessimistic. Your case could be dealt with in a perfectly straightforward way, without any of them getting upset. But it’s my duty to point out what might happen.’

Berg looked at the form. Apart from a code number printed along the top, there was no other writing on the paper. It angered him to think that he was being denied access to the truth, that they had directed Lazlow not to tell him because of—because of what? Some minor technicality, no doubt: perhaps his great-grandfather had been a foreigner. Gazing at the complaints form, he resolved to complete it even at the risk of upsetting someone, some faceless creature, high in the hierarchy.

‘Think carefully, Berg,’ Lazlow said.

‘I will,’ Berg answered.

When he returned to his own office he filled his pen and immediately began to write. At the end of the first sentence, he paused. He listened to Miss Selz typing and then said, ‘Have you ever filled in a complaints form?’

Miss Selz stopped typing. ‘Is that what you’re doing?’

‘I’m perfectly within my rights.’

Miss Selz laughed. ‘Oh? You think you have rights?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I have rights.’

The typist swung round in her chair, giving Berg a momentary glimpse of the shadow between her knees that rose, darker and darker, to her thighs. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone filling in such a form. You’ll only get yourself into hot water, if you ask me. And anyway, how do you know that Lazlow will pass the form on to the appropriate authority? He might decide not to, without telling you. You can’t be sure.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ Berg said. ‘It was his idea.’

‘Oh, he’s full of good ideas,’ the typist said. ‘Suppose he does pass it on? How do you know that it won’t get him into trouble as well as you?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Suppose they say that you’re a troublemaker, they’re bound to ask themselves why Lazlow employed you in the first place and why he doesn’t seem able to control you. Don’t you see? You might land him in it, without meaning to.’

Silently Berg continued to write. When he had written about fifty words he stopped and put his pen down. The whole business seemed suddenly futile. If there was a chance that Lazlow might be reprimanded himself—and what the typist had said seemed plausible—then why should he even bother to pass the complaint on to the appropriate authority? It was obvious that rather than run the risk of a reprimand, he would simply destroy the complaint without telling Berg. On the other hand, even if he did put the complaint through the correct channels there was no guarantee that it would ever be dealt with: it might lie for years amongst a million other complaints, totally unattended.

He picked up the paper, read what he had written and then, sighing, screwed the paper into a ball and threw it into the wastepaper basket.

Miss Selz said, ‘That’s the proper place for it. It’s best not to do anything foolish.’

‘Pointless, you mean. Not foolish.’

‘Call it what you like. But I think you’ve done the right thing by throwing it away.’

Berg got up from his desk. He felt intensely depressed. He looked through the window and up at the unyielding patch of grey sky. What was the point of complaining anyway? People didn’t listen. He had complained to Monika about the way she entered his room whenever she felt like it, and it hadn’t made a scrap of difference. She still sat on the bed as if it were her own. He had complained to Mrs Jacobitz about the food and nothing had happened. It was as inedible as ever, pigs’ swill. And these were only simple complaints, not nearly as complex as an official complaint that had to be fed into an enormous and anonymous machine, where it was sifted, digested, passed from hand to hand, ignored, perhaps even lost.

He turned to look at Miss Selz.

‘I’ve been here for five days,’ he said. ‘And I haven’t done a thing. When do I start work proper?’

‘What do you mean?’ Miss Selz continued to type.

‘I mean that I don’t seem to be doing anything. Or should I say that there doesn’t seem very much to do? Whatever way you look at it, this job could hardly be called exacting.’

‘I told you you’d get bored to the teeth, didn’t I?’

He sat down. ‘I’m not bored. I’m just as prepared as I was to work hard. If only there was some work to be done.’

‘Why don’t you read the files again? You never know. Your telephone might ring.’

Berg sighed, removed a batch of files from the cabinet, and started to read them. He was already as familiar with them as he was ever likely to be, but to pass time he did complex arithmetical sums. He divided the total tonnage of metal pipes delivered in the last eighteen months by the number of steel brackets used to hold the pipes in place. He multiplied the number of bricks delivered in the past year by the average size of electric cable. None of it made any sense: the parts of the sums were as meaningless as the answers he obtained. But it killed a little time, it removed sizeable fragments from the blank hours of the day.

Later, when it was time to leave, he put on his coat and went along the corridor to tell Lazlow that he had decided not to submit the formal complaint after all. He paused outside Lazlow’s door and as he was on the point of knocking, he heard voices from within the room. One was Lazlow’s, the other was Miss Selz’s. He was about to turn round and leave when he heard Miss Selz gasp—a long sound that seemed to be part sob, part sigh. At first it occurred to him that the girl was upset about something and that Lazlow, who seemed to be making low noises from the base of his throat, was attempting to console her.

He bent and put his eye to the keyhole impulsively. Through the tiny aperture, he saw that Miss Selz was lying on top of Lazlow’s desk. Her skirt had been pulled up to her waist and her knickers were at her ankles. The tops of her stockings had been rolled down to just above her knees and the knees themselves were raised in the air. She was simply lying there, limp, as if devoid of life. And then Lazlow came between the keyhole and the desk, obscuring Berg’s view.

Astonished, Berg stood up. He walked out of the building and into the street. He was trembling and his heart was racing. What astounded him was not the realisation that Lazlow and Miss Selz were lovers but that he had actually seen—through the keyhole—the girl spread across the desk, almost naked, lying there as if something had only recently descended upon her and had drained her of her life. She had been almost naked and if the keyhole had been any wider he would have been able to see as far up as her breasts. For a second he was tempted to return and look once again, to be absolutely certain that he had not been deluded.

Miss Selz naked. He had never seen a naked woman before. Only once in his mother’s bedroom had he seen, by accident, the nipple on one of her breasts as she had leaned over to pick up a glass of water. It had looked to him like a small piece of brown rubber tubing, nothing more, nothing to get excited about.

On the corner he stopped, catching his breath. Miss Selz and Lazlow: Lazlow and Miss Selz. Her fingers on the keyboard. Her smooth white fingers in the folds and secret places of Lazlow’s skin. The picture of her was burned into his head. He caught his breath, leaning against the wall and panting as if he had been running.

And then, looking round, he saw a man on the other side of the street reading a newspaper. The paper moved a fraction and for a moment the man’s eyes met Berg’s; but only a moment before the face disappeared again behind the paper.

Berg turned and walked quickly away.

Twelve

He found it difficult that night to sleep. When he did his dreams were filled with birds that rose feverishly into the sky, the sounds of their cries drowned by the mounting crescendo of their wings. When he forced himself awake he saw continual images of Miss Selz’s body, each image so different from the previous one that he could no longer recall exactly what he had seen through the keyhole. Sometimes he saw her breasts, small and tight and sharp, liquid glistening on the pale skin. At other times he saw her feet, trapped in the undergarment, and Lazlow’s body descending like a shadow across her.

He wondered how long they had been lovers and why they risked making love in his office. On the hard surface of that desk, too, where Berg had seen Lazlow clasp his hands or carve a cigarette open with a paper-knife. Was there some significance in the way he folded his hands? Did the destruction of the cigarette have a special meaning? Did Lazlow clean the desk after Miss Selz had lain there? Or did he not? Did he perhaps enjoy the lingering smells of her body on the grain of wood?

Berg turned on his side. Images and half-formed thoughts flashed in and out of his head and he ached, positively ached, to look at Miss Selz again.

It was clear now that Lazlow didn’t employ her just because she was the fastest typist in the district, but that he had other reasons for tolerating her continual lateness. It was all very clear. Since they were lovers, what did they talk about? Berg imagined that he was one topic of their conversation and that whatever he said to Miss Selz was duly reported back to Lazlow. In future he would have to be careful.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep. Some hours later he was awakened by a dull and repetitive noise that seemed to come from the street outside. He tried to ignore it but when it persisted he rose sleepily from the bed and went to the window. Apart from a single yellow lamp that burned about a hundred yards away, throwing a feeble circle of pale light, he could see nothing. There was no one in the street. He turned from the window and realised, suddenly, that the noise originated from somewhere within the house; that in fact it seemed to come from Monika’s room—as if she were striking the wall with the palm of her hand. He went out to the landing. Under her door was a strip of light. He went towards it slowly: he was still half-asleep and he didn’t want to make any noise. Outside her door he stopped. The sound was quite clear now. She was knocking against the wall that adjoined the two rooms: a continuous and rhythmic knocking. But why? If she went on doing it he would never get any sleep and would almost certainly miss hearing the alarm in the morning.

After a moment he pushed open her door and entered her room. When his eyes had become accustomed to the light he saw that she was sitting up in bed, smoking a cigarette. The room was even smaller and shabbier than his. Her underwear was strewn across the floor and a pair of stockings hung from the back of a chair. Beside her bed a very weak lamp burned.

‘This is a surprise,’ she said.

‘It isn’t a social call,’ Berg said. ‘I want you to stop making that noise——’

‘Noise? What noise?’

‘You know what I’m talking about. You were knocking on the wall and I can’t get to sleep——’

Monika laughed. ‘You must have been dreaming. As you can see, I’ve been reading a book.’ And she held up a book as if it were a vital piece of evidence.

‘I know I wasn’t dreaming. I can’t understand why you deny what you were doing.’

‘I do deny it,’ she said. ‘I can assure you that I wasn’t banging on the wall. Why would I do a silly thing like that? Why should I want to annoy you? Answer me that.’

‘I’m sure you’ve got pretty good reasons of your own,’ Berg said. ‘All I want is a little peace.’

Monika put down the book and smiled. ‘I’m not going to argue with you. Now that you are here, do I assume that you mean to seduce me?’

Berg blinked. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not why I’m here.’

‘Well you have to admit it’s all very strange. You come into my bedroom at midnight and you say you don’t want to seduce me? Am I to believe that?’

‘Believe what you like,’ Berg said. ‘All I want is to get some sleep.’

‘Sleep? Tell me something. Don’t you find me attractive? Don’t you even want to kiss me? Am I so very repulsive?’

‘I hadn’t thought about whether you’re attractive or not. It hardly matters to me.’

‘Of course not. I’d quite forgotten. You like to think of yourself as independent, don’t you?’

Berg was conscious for the first time that he was standing in front of her wearing only his pyjamas. He was beset by the absurd fear that the cord might break and the trousers fall down.

Monika sighed. ‘Very well then. It’s clear to me that you came into my room under some nonsensical pretext, with the specific intention of seducing me—and now that you’re faced with the opportunity your courage has failed you. Isn’t that so?’

‘You can think whatever you like,’ Berg said.

‘Would it disturb you too much even to kiss me?’

‘I don’t want to kiss you.’

‘You’re like a schoolboy. If you don’t want to seduce me, why don’t you clear out?’

Berg looked round the room. The stockings on the back of the chair hung down as if—and here there was some odd trick of light and texture—as if her legs were still inside them. The whole room gave him the impression of squalor, a particularly feminine squalor. And worse still there was a smell, a woman’s smell, an aroma he could not describe but which sometimes he had noticed in his mother’s room. He wanted nothing more than to return to his room and sleep, yet he stood there motionless.

‘Are you still a virgin?’ she asked.

Berg said nothing: the question made him feel ashamed.

‘I suppose you must be. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so stupid. Can’t you see that I’m quite willing? That I’ve been willing ever since you arrived?’

‘Please,’ Berg said. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Why don’t you take me?’

Monika stepped out of bed. Against her nightdress there was a clear impression of her breasts and her hair hung down over her shoulders. Berg had never know a woman to offer herself so openly before and he did not know how to respond. He could not even decide, in that split second, if he wanted her or not and even if he had wanted her what would happen after he had taken her in his arms: it was like plunging into an icy black sea and swimming towards the unknown.

‘Why are you such a prude?’

‘Does it make me a prude if you don’t appeal to me?’

‘You know I appeal to you. Why deny it?’

She was standing by the bed, waiting for him. Berg went towards the door.

‘Will you let me sleep?’ he asked.

‘Will you let yourself sleep?’

Berg stepped on to the landing, closing the door behind him. In his own room he lay for a time and looked at the strange shadows on the wall and the faint reflection on the window of the distant street lamp.

Thirteen

For the rest of that night Berg was unable to sleep. He dropped off for a restless hour between four and five o’clock and when he woke he washed himself and dressed. It was pointless going back to bed, and even if he were to fall asleep again there was every chance that he would miss hearing the alarm. He could not afford to be late at the office. Even Lazlow, who held a position of responsibility, arrived promptly each morning at eight.

Dressed, Berg sat down at the table and waited until it was time for breakfast. He tried to think of nothing at all; he tried especially not to think of Miss Selz and the sight through the keyhole, and of Monika and their midnight meeting. Besides, the whole thing was beginning to assume the qualities of a dream and it flashed through his mind that perhaps after all he had imagined everything. Certainly at the time he could have sworn that she had been rapping the adjoining wall but she had denied this so forcefully that he had his doubts. And if indeed he had dreamed about the sound, then there was a strong possibility that the rest had been a dream as well. Perhaps he had never gone to her room; perhaps she had never propositioned him; perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. He liked this idea, if only because it spared him the embarrassment of thinking that the events he remembered had actually taken place. Normally, of course, he was perfectly able to distinguish between dreams and reality, but last night he had been in a disturbed state. It wasn’t just the sight of Miss Selz that had upset him, nor even the thought that she and Lazlow were lovers—people were entitled to do what they wanted, after all—but it was an accumulation of these things. There was also the man behind the paper who had been watching him. It was quite beyond doubt that this man had been detailed to observe Berg. But detailed by whom? And for what? Even if he couldn’t answer these questions, it upset him just the same to think that his movements were being watched. It was an invasion on his privacy and, in a sense, a frontal attack on his rights as a human being. And since he was being watched, where did the watching begin and end? He could no longer cross a street without feeling that invisible eyes were following his movements and that the things he did were somewhere being remembered and recorded. It was a disgusting sensation, like trying to undress on a public beach before a gallery of curious observers.

Berg smoked a cigarette, something he did not normally do until after he had eaten: but his old habits were behind him. His new circumstances called for new behaviour. The smoke irritated his lungs and made him feel acutely sick, but he persevered. When he had finished smoking he looked from the window. Outside it was still dark: over the houses there was a faint streak of grey light, but so small as to be almost invisible.

At seven o’clock he went downstairs for breakfast. Mrs Jacobitz, to his surprise, was already in the kitchen. He could hear her running water and clattering around with dishes. He sat down at the table and looked out on the darkened garden: the clumps of shrubbery, indistinct in those places where the electric light did not strike, looked oblique and threatening.

The widow came in with a plate of food: a fried egg and a thick slice of cold sausage as well as the customary bread fried in lard that Berg did not eat but which the widow continued to serve as if in the faint hope that she might be able to train him to eat whatever she prepared.

‘It’s a bit chilly this morning,’ she said. She sat down at the table and slurped coffee from a cup. Berg found her manners very poor. She ate and drank like a performing chimpanzee in a circus. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ she remarked. ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to drop off, don’t you think?’

‘Sometimes,’ he answered. He had found by experience that the less he said to the widow the better. That way he minimised the chances of yet another misunderstanding.

‘I kept hearing noises. When I was about to drop off I’d hear someone moving about the house. It wasn’t you, was it?’

‘No,’ Berg said.

‘I thought not. You wouldn’t have any reason for moving around at night, would you? I mean, there isn’t anything to do when it’s dark, is there?’

Berg shook his head and ate his breakfast. He pushed the pieces of fried bread to the side of his plate.

‘Unless you wanted to talk to somebody,’ the widow said. ‘But apart from me and Monika there isn’t anybody to talk to, is there?’

Berg looked at her. He had the strong feeling that she was leading up to something and that she was circling round whatever she really wanted to say.

‘So it couldn’t have been you that I heard. Oh well, perhaps I was dreaming. When you get to my age you dream a lot, you know. Only the other night I had the strangest dream. I saw you and Monika out there in the garden.’ She laughed suddenly, throwing herself forward. ‘Neither of you had any clothes on. Isn’t that strange? They say that dreams mean things. I’m only a country woman, not educated like yourself, so I couldn’t possibly know what that dream meant. Have you any idea?’

Berg chewed on the cold sausage. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No idea.’

‘Do you think it means that I’d like to see you and Monika become lovers?’

‘Lovers?’ Berg spluttered a little. ‘I’m quite sure that dreams mean the opposite of what you think them to mean.’

‘Is that so?’ The widow poured him some coffee. ‘Then it means that I don’t want you and Monika to become lovers, doesn’t it? Perhaps that’s just as well. Even if she would have you, which I doubt, we don’t know a single thing about your background. I mean, you say that you came here from the capital. How do we know if that’s true? How do we know that anything you tell us is true? We don’t, do we? You could be spinning a yarn all the time. It strikes me as a bit odd that a man from the capital should come all this way north just to work. Couldn’t you have found a job in the city? Or were you running away from something?’

She began to laugh, shaking her thick body up and down.

‘I’m only thinking aloud,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to look so worried. I don’t know what I want for Monika, that’s the trouble. Except her happiness. That’s all.’

Berg drank his coffee quickly. The prospect of getting involved in a lengthy conversation with the widow was unpleasant. He rose to his feet.

‘I can assure you that I don’t tell lies. Everything you know about me is the truth.’

She went with him to the front door and watched him go on to the street. When for some reason he looked back, she raised her arm and waved. He pretended not to have noticed.

Fourteen

When Lazlow called him into his office, Berg could not see it in quite the same light as before. The sense of awe, the awareness of entering the centre of authority, that he usually experienced stepping over the threshold had gone. He saw the desk differently too. It was longer than the average desk, the wood varnished to a high degree of smoothness. The surface caught and held reflections of light from the window, trapped them. As always, it was free of paper. A paper-knife, a paperweight in the shape of a smooth stone, and several pens placed neatly in a holder: nothing more. These objects seemed somehow fixed there for all time, immovable, yet Berg knew that before Miss Selz lay there again Lazlow would have to shift them.

‘Please sit down, Berg,’ Lazlow picked up the paper-knife and fingered the blade. Berg sat: Lazlow’s face, as ever, was expressionless.

‘I want to have a further word with you on the subject we discussed yesterday.’

Sitting forward in his chair, Berg waited. To his slight irritation, Lazlow was silent for a long time. He got up, walked to the window, fidgeted with the sash: when was he going to speak? Berg felt tense.

At last Lazlow turned. ‘I have received another directive this morning. Naturally it concerns you.’

‘Is it bad news?’ Berg asked.

‘That depends on how you interpret it,’ Lazlow said. He opened his desk and took out a piece of flimsy paper. ‘Let me read it to you. It goes as follows: “Further to our last directive on the subject of the new employee, Berg, as from this date he will be entitled to the various benefits given to all members of permanent staff—including an annual holiday of twenty days, a travel allowance not to exceed two per cent of his weekly wage if this is necessary, and membership of our life insurance scheme. However, he will not be given access to any information that is considered classified. This includes detailed information about the Site.” There you are, Berg.’

Lazlow took off his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. And then he looked at Berg, waiting for a response.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Berg said.

‘Let me give you my interpretation of it. First, it seems to me that you have been accepted as a member of the permanent staff, although the directive doesn’t actually state this. It says that you are to have all permanent staff benefits, not that you are to be considered a permanent staff member. But I think that for all practical purposes you can consider yourself permanent. Second, it appears that your clearance has come through, at least in part. Otherwise, you’d never be given these benefits. Third, I don’t think you’ve been cleared entirely, otherwise you would have been given access to any information. So the directive, from your point of view, is both good and bad. At the very least, the situation looks promising.’

‘Promising? But it’s completely ambiguous.’ Berg got up from his chair and looked down at Lazlow. ‘I don’t know where I stand any more than I knew yesterday. If anything, it’s a backward step. They’ve acknowledged my existence, but at the same time they’ve continued to block my path. I can’t agree with you that it’s promising at all.’

Lazlow replaced his spectacles. ‘Berg you want too much too soon. Be patient. Everything will become clear in time. I think this directive makes it plain that they’re anxious to accept you, hence the benefits. But it’s obvious that they can’t go around giving away vital information.’

Berg stared at Lazlow. For the first time, he felt that he had the upper hand in their relationship. He had only to open his mouth, to reveal what he knew and he was certain that Lazlow would crumble.

‘I don’t think it’s good enough,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter what you think. It’s what they think that’s important.’

Berg went to the door. ‘A travel allowance,’ he said contemptuously. ‘As if I needed a travel allowance!’

Lazlow stood up. ‘You’re trying my patience, Berg. They offer you these benefits and you … you more or less spit at them. Sometimes I think you have an inflated idea of your own importance here.’

Berg walked to the desk and laid his hands on the very spot where Miss Selz had lain: the wood felt like flesh, cold flesh.

‘Put yourself in my position for a change,’ he said. ‘If you did you’d see that my life, my working life, is controlled to an extent that I find intolerable.’

Lazlow groaned. ‘I’ve already expressed my sympathy. I don’t think I need to say more, except to tell you to control yourself.’

Berg smiled. ‘Yes, self-control. We all need a little self-control sometimes, don’t we?’ And he looked once more down at the surface of the desk before going out of the room. He went into the lavatory and locked the door. His hands were shaking. He was out of his mind: he should never have spoken to Lazlow like that. It amounted to unspoken blackmail. If Lazlow had pushed him too far, he would have blurted out what he knew: it was almost indecent. It was almost indecent to be in the position where, simply by opening his mouth and mentioning that he had happened to look through a certain keyhole at a certain time, he could exert influence over a man. How would Lazlow take it? Berg imagined him slumped in his chair, terrified that his liaison with Miss Selz should be made public: his whole career in ruins, his status suddenly destroyed. When he walked in the street people would say, There goes the man who threw up everything just so that he could seduce his little typist. What a scandal. And Berg was certain that Lazlow could not afford such a scandal. Yet he knew also that he would never reveal his knowledge unless his very survival were at stake. Otherwise, it was immoral.

Miss Selz looked up when he entered their office. He thought she seemed pale and tired.

‘Been having another session with the master?’ she asked.

‘Why do you call him the master? Is he your master?’ Berg sat down.

‘He’s in charge, isn’t he? Why shouldn’t I call him the master?’ The typist seemed surprised that her innocent remark should have been challenged.

‘He’s in charge of me too, and I wouldn’t call him my master. Why should it be any different for you? Is your relationship with him any different from mine?’

Miss Selz did not answer at once. ‘We are in a funny mood this morning, aren’t we? Is anything wrong?’

Berg looked at her: it was hardly possible that this was the same girl he had seen sprawled across Lazlow’s desk.

‘What’s funny about my mood?’ he asked.

‘Do you know what I think, Berg? I think you don’t have a sense of humour.’ She took an apple from her bag and bit it. She watched him for a time, her lips parted slightly. A thin thread of saliva linked her lower lip with the upper.

‘Perhaps it’s because I don’t find anything very amusing around here. Have you thought about that?’

‘But everything’s amusing. Don’t you think the whole of human life is a comedy?’

She was still watching him and he had the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that she was laughing at him, even mocking him.

‘Not especially,’ he answered. ‘If that’s your view of things, then I’d say that it was cynical as well as flippant.’

‘Cynical and flippant? Oh dear. I hadn’t thought of myself in that way before. Cynical and flippant—is that terrible?’

Berg opened a file, took out his pencil and doodled on a blank sheet of paper. He was conscious of the girl’s eyes on his face; but he resolved not to look at her. He put down his pencil and read the file from beginning to end. What else was there to do?

Miss Selz said, ‘I think I’d rather be cynical and flippant than be like you, Berg. I can’t imagine what your little world is like. I’d imagine it’s pretty horrible. Is it? Is it horrible?’

He stared out through the window, but he did not answer her.

Fifteen

After supper when Mrs Jacobitz had retired to the kitchen, Berg found it embarrassing to be left alone with Monika. He smoked a cigarette and sipped his coffee, waiting for her to make some reference to what had happened the night before. In the early morning it had seemed probable that he had dreamed the whole incident, but now, in the reality of the dining room and Monika’s presence, this was wildly unlikely. No; he hadn’t dreamed it, it had really taken place—and Monika, sitting there so quietly staring into space, was thinking of something to say. Would she want to embarrass him even more? Or would she simply try to pass the matter off as a joke? He waited, looking at his fingers which he saw, to his horror, were stained yellow from cigarettes. He had never smoked so much in his entire life.

‘I feel like going for a walk,’ she said. ‘Would you like to come along?’

Berg looked at her and wondered if she had something more to say. ‘Do you have anywhere in particular in mind?’ he asked.

‘I just feel like getting some fresh air.’ Monika got up from the table and smiled at him. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to eat you.’

‘I wasn’t worrying about anything,’ Berg said. ‘It’s just that I had a difficult day at work and I don’t know if I feel like walking anywhere.’

‘Make up your mind.’ she answered. ‘I’m going out regardless.’

She went into the hallway and put on her coat. Berg watched her through the open doorway. Did she have something on her mind? He felt suddenly indecisive. The day had exhausted him because he found the concentrated act of doing nothing for hours on end a positive strain. And there was Miss Selz who for most of the afternoon had made the occasional barbed comment, as if she wanted to provoke him into anger—for reasons that he could not even begin to guess.

‘Well? Are you coming?’ Monika stood in the doorway. ‘Why do you always have such a painful difficulty in making up your mind?’

Berg moved forward reluctantly, as though impelled from behind. ‘I’m coming,’ he said.

They went out on to the street and walked towards the centre of the town. Berg found himself marvelling at the silence of the place. It wasn’t just the absence of traffic, it was the lack of people. Someone flying overhead would have guessed that the town was uninhabited. Where were all the people? When they came to the Anniversary Monument they walked round it and down the hill in a direction Berg had never gone before. After some minutes he realised that they were travelling on the road that led out of town. Down below he saw the railway lines and remembered his arrival: it seemed to belong to the distant past just as much as his life in the city did.

‘Where are we going?’

Monika, who hadn’t spoken a word, simply looked at him and smiled. A hundred yards further along the road they turned into a field and walked on a footpath. On either side of the path the field was cultivated with a yellow crop that he did not recognise: corn? wheat? He was on the point of asking when Monika sat down in the shade of a tree. For a moment he hesitated in joining her: there was something inexplicably unnerving in the isolation of the place.

‘Sit down, come on,’ she said.

He tested the dry grass with the palm of his hand before sitting. Monika took out a cigarette and lit it and then turned to look at him.

‘It’s pleasant here. Don’t you find it restful? You need fresh clean air after being stuck in your office all day long.’

‘You’re quite right,’ Berg said.

‘Think of all that stale air in your lungs.’

Something in the way she had said that reminded Berg of his mother and of the air-sprays in her sick-room. She was constantly spraying the air with perfumes, as if that purged the room of its germs.

‘Don’t you like it here?’ Monika asked.

‘It’s very peaceful.’

Monika was silent. A flock of black birds flew suddenly out of the field as if something, or someone, had disturbed them. Berg looked into the distance: was someone moving out there, hidden by the crop? He realised that he was unaccountably nervous. He had never been in so silent a place before; a silence so deep that it seemed to contain whispers.

Monika turned to him. ‘Don’t you think we should examine our relationship?’

‘Our relationship? I don’t think I understand you. What sort of relationship do we have?’

‘It isn’t a question of what sort of relationship we have. It’s more a question of the sort we might have in the future.’ Monika smoked her cigarette, staring at him. If she was trying, by that stare, to unnerve him, she was succeeding: he looked away. The birds had gone.

‘I happen to live in the same house as you. Is there anything more?’

Monika laughed. ‘There could be.’

‘Look, it’s an accident that I lodge with your aunt. Why should you try to make something out of that accident?’

‘Accidents don’t happen,’ she said.

‘What does that mean?’

Monika shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter what I mean, if you don’t already know. I’ll put it another way. I want you to be my lover. Isn’t that plain enough?’

‘It’s perfectly plain,’ he answered, but beyond that he did not know what to say.

Monika stubbed her cigarette in the thick grass and lay back against the tree, her eyes closed. ‘I’ve had several lovers, Berg. I can’t claim that I’m a virgin and that I’d come to you untouched by any other man. I’ve had a lot of experience in these things, for better or worse. As for you, I don’t think you’ve had any experience at all.’

Berg opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. It was true: at the age of thirty-five he had no experience. He was not even sure, now, whether he wanted any—or whether he could do anything if the chance arose.

‘But that doesn’t matter,’ Monika said. ‘So I’ve told you what I want. I’ve been as open as I know how to be. What do you think?’

Berg looked down at her lying against the tree and then elsewhere, away across the field. For a split second he imagined that he saw someone moving low through the crop; but it was an illusion, a trick of the breeze moving the stalks.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said. ‘Last night, when you said——’

‘What about last night?’ she asked.

‘When I came to your room——’

‘You did what? I must have been asleep. That’s strange, because I’m a light sleeper and I normally wake when anyone enters my room. Why did you come anyway?’

Berg stared at her, surprised: for a moment he was confused. If she had no recollection of their conversation, then he must have dreamed it, he must have. But it all seemed so real. It seemed somehow so tangible and solid that it could not have been a dream.

‘Don’t you remember?’ he asked.

‘No, I must have been sleeping.’

‘But——’ He stopped, suddenly relieved. ‘Perhaps I dreamt it. It must have been a dream.’

‘It must have been. I’m quite sure you’re not the sort of man who comes into a woman’s bedroom, are you, Berg? Or have I misjudged you?’

Berg continued to stare at her. Suddenly it crossed his mind that she was deliberately trying to confuse him, that she was teasing him, playing a little game with him; there was something in the tone of her voice that suggested she was pretending not to remember. But why? To Berg it seemed a silly, pointless sort of game.

‘It seemed so clear, that’s all.’

Monika closed her eyes again and said nothing for a long time. And then; ‘Poor Berg. Fancy having wicked dreams at your age.’ She put out her hand and touched him on the wrist. ‘I hope it was a wild and erotic dream. Was it? Was it enjoyable?’

‘It wasn’t that sort of dream,’ Berg said and took his hand away. He got to his feet. If she were lying about the dream, what could her purpose be? Why should she deliberately try to confuse him? ‘It’s getting late. Let’s walk back.’

‘Already? I was just beginning to enjoy myself.’ Slowly, Monika rose. She brushed down her coat and looked at him.

‘Well, Berg, will you be my lover?’

‘I don’t think you’re serious.’

‘I’m as serious as I’m likely to be. Do you want me to prove how serious I am?’

They walked back along the path. She held his arm.

‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘You know where my room is, don’t you? You know where to find me.’

He looked up at the darkening sky. Even if she were serious, even if she really wanted him to be her lover, he still could not understand why she denied that he had ever visited her room. It didn’t make sense. Unless, of course, she was telling the truth: unless he had, after all, imagined the whole incident. But he knew, he always knew, the difference between the dream and the reality; any confusion of the two was insane, positively insane.

When they reached the house, she said. ‘I won’t sleep tonight. I’ll wait for you to come to me. Say you’ll come, Berg. Promise me.’

‘I can’t promise anything,’ he answered.

‘But I can. I can promise you lots of things.’ She leaned close to him, brushing his mouth with her lips. In that second he felt the firmness of her breasts against his body, the pressure of her knee against the inside of his leg, the touch of her hand on the side of his thigh. He stepped back and looked at her.

Mrs Jacobitz came into the hall. If she had witnessed their brief contact, she said nothing about it.

‘It looks like rain,’ she said. ‘Been for a walk, have you? I like to see young people getting out into the fresh air.’

Berg said nothing. He went upstairs to his room.

Sixteen

The whole business about the dream bothered him, if only because he could not understand Monika’s motives. For his own part, he was absolutely certain that he had in fact gone to her room. If that was true, what possible reasons could Monika have for denying it? Again, when he thought about it, it seemed nothing more to him than a stupid kind of game, designed, for some reason, to confuse him. Well, he refused to be baffled by it: it was simply a matter of saying to himself that he had not dreamed anything, that everything had taken place just as he remembered it. Only an idiot could possibly confuse dream and reality to the extent that it was impossible to differentiate between the two. He started to undress for bed and had undone the buttons of his shirt when Mrs Jacobitz came into the room.

‘I want to talk to you,’ she said.

‘I was just about to go to bed,’ he answered.

‘That can wait.’ She sat down on the bed—as if to make certain of preventing him—and said, ‘I want to know just what’s going on between you and my niece.’

‘Going on? Nothing is going on.’

‘Come off it, you can’t pull the wool over my eyes. Mr Berg.’ She was glaring at him, tugging and pulling at her bulbous fingers in an agitated way. ‘I have the strong feeling that you intend having your way with her.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Berg said. ‘I’ve never heard of such nonsense.’

The widow laughed mirthlessly. ‘I’m not being ridiculous. I’ve been alive too long not to see something that’s staring me in the face. I think we ought to try and get matters straight don’t you?’

‘Certainly.’ Berg did up a couple of his shirt buttons and sat down at the table. ‘By all means. It seems to me that there’s a great deal of misunderstanding going on——’

‘I can assure you that I haven’t misunderstood a single thing. Do you think I’m stupid? I may be a simple country woman, and you may be a well-educated man, but I’m not blind. I’ve got perfectly good eyesight and I can see what’s going on around me.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs Jacobitz.’

‘I’m talking, as you well know, about you and my niece. I’ve kept my patience for long enough, Mr Berg, but I must speak out now. It’s clear to me that you’ve got designs on Monika. It’s clear to me that you find her attractive. And we both know what happens when a man finds a woman, a single woman, attractive, don’t we? Have you touched her yet? Have you been near her?’

Berg laughed. ‘You’re being quite irrational. I’ve got no intention of touching your precious niece. If anything, it’s the other way round. Ask her. She’ll tell you what she said to me this evening, if she dares. Ask her. Find out for yourself.

‘You’ve influenced her, that’s what you’ve done. You’ve got some sort of power over her. She’s a good girl. She’s decent-living. If I may say so, I intend to make sure that she stays a virgin.’

‘A virgin! A virgin!’ Berg rose from the table, still laughing. ‘I’ve never heard anything so funny in my life.’

‘Are you saying that she isn’t a virgin?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. And before you leap to any stupid conclusions, don’t lay the blame at my door. I haven’t gone near her. And I don’t intend to. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a hundred men had been at her at one time or another.’

Suddenly the widow screamed. ‘That’s a monstrous slander. It’s absolutely monstrous! You come up here from your blessed city, throwing your weight around and putting on airs and graces and you’re nothing more than a liar and a philanderer.’

Berg sat down again. ‘Control yourself, Mrs Jacobitz. I’m only telling you what your niece told me herself. I don’t want to shatter your illusions, but you’ve forced me into it. I’m sorry, but there you are.’

Mrs Jacobitz rose from the bed. Her face was red, her eyes watering. She puffed for a time as if trying to catch her breath. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if you had to run away from women trouble. You’re the sort. I can tell by looking at you. You seduced my poor Monika.’

Berg was silent: nothing he could say would make any impression on the hysterical woman. She was mad, quite mad. He shook his head and looked at her. She was walking up and down the room, stumbling into things.

‘You seduced her, you seduced her. Why don’t you admit it?’

‘I deny it.’

‘You liar! You cheat!’

She came towards him and began to lash out blindly with her clenched fists. He parried the blows easily, pushing her away.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she said. ‘Don’t come near me.’

‘Why don’t you leave me alone? You’ve done nothing but irritate me ever since I came here. I’ve tried to be reasonable, believe me, but you’re impossible.’

Mrs Jacobitz stood by the door. She was staring at him, tears ran over her cheeks.

‘I’ll pack my case first thing in the morning,’ Berg said. ‘I can’t stand much more of this. As if things weren’t difficult enough, I have to be burdened with a crazy woman as well——’

‘Yes, yes, pack your case in the morning. Get out. I don’t want to see you again.’

The widow went out, slamming the door behind her. Berg dropped exhausted on the bed. A moment later Monika came into the room.

‘I heard it all,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to forgive Vera, Berg. She’s quite mad sometimes. You’ll see, by tomorrow morning she’ll have forgotten the whole thing.’

‘I’ve had enough,’ Berg said. ‘I’ll leave in the morning. What’s the point of tolerating her behaviour?’

Monika sat down beside him on the bed. ‘You mustn’t go, Berg. Don’t leave me here. You can’t leave me.’

He closed his eyes. ‘Please, I’d like to get some sleep now.’

‘When you’ve slept, promise me that you’ll come. I’ll wait for you. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep anyway.’

Berg listened to her going from the room. He finished undressing and climbed into bed. He was exhausted, but the widow’s cries seemed to ring for ages in his head, making sleep difficult. As he lay there, pondering her crazy behaviour, a peculiar thought flashed through his mind: what if the rest of the world, apart from himself, were insane? What if he were the only human being in the whole world who was not a lunatic? It was a frightening thought: the only man with eyes in the country of the blind.

Seventeen

He dreamed that night—not of the birds, as he had done on previous occasions. He dreamed that he himself was suddenly able to rise up as if equipped with wings, but he could not turn his head to make certain. When he looked below he saw a black shadow, his own drift across the landscape: a winter landscape, the earth sore and empty, the trees blasted. He floated across it, seeking something. He did not know what, but he felt that the object of the search was of less importance than the search itself. Somehow it was only important to keep moving, for if he stopped he felt that he would plunge out of the sky.

Then, for a moment, the dream changed. It was as if he had suddenly opened his eyes and looked into the room, conscious of the presence of another person: but whether this was a part of the dream he couldn’t tell, because it passed in a second and once again he was drifting across the barren landscape.

Far below him he saw a tiny shape; he descended towards it. When he was only a few feet above it he realised that it was a person, a woman, her face covered in a black scarf, but he could not avoid dropping towards it now, it was too late to swing upwards, the collision was inevitable. He closed his eyes: the impact was softer than he had anticipated, the woman’s body seeming to yield just as soon as he struck it. He tore at the scarf, trying to get to the face, he tore at it not with hands but with what seemed to him like claws. Blood flowed through the scarf and on to his own body and although he himself was struggling furiously the woman was totally passive, motionless, allowing him to strike and tear at her masked face. Frustrated, he stepped back; the figure dropped to the ground and lay there; her white flesh, streaked with red, was visible where her garment parted. He moved forward again, and threw himself on top of her …

Berg woke several minutes before his alarm was due to ring. He sat up in bed: the dream was fresh in his mind with a surprising clarity but even as he tried to remember it, piece by piece it was starting to fade. He got out of bed and lit a cigarette at once. The floor was cold under his feet and he shivered.

It had been a nightmare. He almost described it to himself as a nightmare, yet there had been rather more pleasure in it than fear. He drew on his cigarette and went across the room to the window. He pulled back the curtain. Outside, in the pale grey light, it was raining. He put on his trousers and was turning to wash his face when he became conscious of voices in the hallway downstairs.

One of them was Mrs Jacobitz’s—shrill and hysterical. He opened his door and looked over the rail. The widow was crying aloud but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. And then there was a man’s voice, calm and reasoned. Closing his door again, Berg wondered if there had been an accident.

He had barely shut the door when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Someone knocked on his door and something about this sound made Berg shudder. He opened the door. A man was standing on the landing, his hands in the pockets of his raincoat.

‘Berg?’

He was tall and heavily built. The hat that he wore shadowed the major part of his face. Although it was impossible for Berg to see his eyes, he knew that the man was staring at him.

The man stepped into the room, looked around quickly, and then closed the door.

‘Is something wrong?’ Berg asked.

‘Do you know Monika Jahn?’

Berg nodded. He felt chill.

‘Her aunt found her this morning, lying in the hall down there. She was bleeding badly and she had been assaulted. Somebody raped her.’

‘Raped her? That’s terrible.’ Berg sat down on the bed and looked at the man. ‘That’s dreadful.’

‘It’s pretty bad.’ The man sat down at the table and gazed at his own wrists, his eyes screwed up in the feeble light. ‘She’s hardly conscious.’ He paused a moment. ‘She told us who did it.’

Berg shut his eyes briefly: his dream returned to him with frightening clarity.

‘She said that you raped her, Berg.’

Berg said, ‘I didn’t touch her. I couldn’t have raped her.’ But he had the awful feeling, the dry, terrible sensation that the walls of the room, like living things, were closing in around him. In silence, he watched the man take off his hat and lay it on the table.

Berg realised then that he had seen the man before. Behind a newspaper, across the street from the office.

Part Two

‘I wasn’t a petty little clerk.’

S. Berg

One

It was clearly a breast. Berg was surprised he had not noticed it before: the lamp, streaked by rain, looked like a breast glistening. He stared for a time from the window and turned only when the man’s voice broke the silence of the room. Even then he did not immediately understand what was being said to him. He could only think of the absurdity of this situation. Certainly, it would be cleared up in a matter of minutes—just as soon as he explained that he had had nothing to do with Monika’s assault. But just the same it was almost comical: like a comic nightmare, where no matter how terrifying the apparitions there is still something intrinsically funny in their appearance.

The man, seated at the table and turning the damp brim of his hat between his fingers, repeated himself.

‘My name is Sbodin. I am a district investigator.’

A district investigator? Berg wondered. Was there more than one? He walked from the window and sat on the bed. The room was cold; dark and cold, rain still falling against the window. Outside the sky was a depressing grey. He shivered and searched amongst the folds of the blankets for his cigarettes.

‘Perhaps you fail to appreciate the seriousness of your position, Berg. You have been accused of rape. I don’t have to tell you that an offence like that carries a stiff penalty.’

Berg could not prevent himself from giggling. The sound rose up in his throat and seemed to rattle against the dry walls of his mouth. What was there in this situation that struck him as being so absurd? Sbodin’s heavy solemnity? Monika’s undignified rape? He shrugged his shoulders and continued to look for his cigarettes.

‘I’m surprised you find it so funny,’ Sbodin said. He was sweeping his damp hat across the surface of the table, creating a haphazard pattern of damp streaks. His hand moved back and forth, pushing the hat from one side of the table to the other as though the pattern he was making had a special significance. ‘If I was in your position I wouldn’t be laughing. I’d be thinking how I could get out of it.’

Berg stopped his search for his cigarettes. ‘I didn’t rape her. I’ve already said that. I don’t see what else there is to discuss.’

‘Oh, there’s plenty to discuss,’ Sbodin said. ‘I’m not in any hurry, and there are several questions that you’ll have to answer.’

Berg looked at his clock. ‘You’d better ask them quickly. I don’t want to be late for the office——’

Sbodin lit a cigarette and was silent for a time. ‘You don’t have to worry about going to the office. Someone will explain the situation to Mr Lazlow. He’ll understand why you’re being detained.’

‘Detained?’ The word somehow horrified Berg; it implied restricted movement, the inability to decide and choose for himself. But even more alarming was the thought that Lazlow would know why he was being detained. He would know that an employee of his had been accused of rape and even when Berg was finally acquitted something of the accusation would still stick to his name. Monika, that stupid bitch, had placed his whole career in jeopardy. By her one foolish utterance she had led him into a situation fraught with difficulties. How would Lazlow react to the news? Could he be relied upon to give his support? Would he perhaps offer a character reference, demonstrating beyond all possible doubt that Berg was not the sort of man to rape a woman?

‘You are not, of course, detained in the official sense,’ Sbodin said. ‘But until this whole business is cleared up … well, I wouldn’t want you to try to leave town.’

Berg began his frantic search for his cigarettes again. Where were they? Only ten minutes ago he had seen the packet on the bed. He was certain of it. He tugged the blanket back and searched amongst the sheets. More than anything else, he wanted to smoke. He wanted to take smoke into his lungs and feel his whole body relax as he exhaled. He watched Sbodin draw on his cigarette and saw the smoke curl upwards around his nostrils and then rise against the ceiling and disperse. But he would not ask Sbodin for a cigarette. He didn’t want that sort of favour.

‘Perhaps we might get down to some serious talk,’ Sbodin said. He got up from the table and went to the window. It was still surprisingly dark outside and Berg wondered if perhaps his clock was fast. Was it ten to seven and not ten to eight? How could the morning be so dark? He picked up the clock and shook it.

Sbodin, still gazing out through the window, asked, ‘Why do you deny that you raped the woman?’

‘That’s a stupid question,’ Berg said. ‘I deny it because I didn’t do it. Anyway, are you certain that she was raped? Has she been medically examined? Has a doctor looked at her?’

‘You ask too many questions. I’m satisfied beyond any doubt that she was raped. Whether you’re satisfied or not is beside the point. What I’m interested in is why she should accuse you and why you should deny it.’

‘You said she was hysterical. How could you trust anything that an hysterical person told you? She would simply say the first thing that came into her mind. She wasn’t being rational. She wasn’t in her right mind.’

Sbodin returned to the table and sat down. He crossed his hands one over the other. They were heavy hands; they were implements that had been used more for digging than caressing. Whenever he moved he appeared to do so with a certain caution as if afraid of his own clumsiness, to minimise the possibilities of colliding with a fragile object. When he looked at Berg he had a trick of lowering the lids of his eyes, perhaps to suggest that he wasn’t entirely concentrating on what he was doing, that his mind was elsewhere. Sometimes he reached out and nervously touched his hat, but he didn’t give the impression of being a nervous man. In this sense he was acting, his gestures were false—his whole appearance and manner was a trap designed to catch and ensnare anyone who told a lie or said something inconsistent with an earlier statement. Looking at him, Berg felt acutely nervous; he had the strong impression that the man carried in himself immense reserves of strength and cunning. He was powerful, he had the right to ask questions but never to answer any unless it suited his strategy.

Berg rose from the bed. A sensation of great weariness had come over him. He wanted to get this matter cleared up. He rubbed his arms as though to rub life back into himself. How could Monika have landed him in this mess? What had made her say that he—of all people—had raped her? He thought back to the first time he had seen her, that first afternoon when he had awoken to find her standing by the bed. Now he could no longer remember if she had been standing by the bottom of the bed or at the top. And then he remembered the train journey that had brought him to this place, that racketing journey through senseless passages of light and darkness. And before that, he remembered his mother. Why had he left, her in the first place? None of this would ever have happened if he had stayed with her. He would still be attending to her in the middle of the night, carrying tablets and glasses of water and listening to the whine of her voice. But that was more than he could bear to even think about. He had had to leave her.

Sbodin undid the buttons of his coat. ‘Because she was hysterical, it doesn’t mean that she wasn’t telling the truth. You must agree with that.’

‘Yes,’ Berg shivered at the window. Below, he saw Monika being led into a car. Mrs Jacobitz supported her by her left elbow; on the other side was a man in a green raincoat. All three went into the car. As Monika was being helped into her seat, Berg caught a glimpse of her face. Pale, bloodless, heavily marked—or was it shadow? She did not look up at the window. For a moment he felt almost sorry for her. Yet how could he be sympathetic? He had a sudden urge to throw open the window and shout to her to come back and tell the truth, to get him out of this ludicrous predicament, but even as he was considering this the car began to move forward.

‘Where is she being taken?’ he asked.

‘Does that matter?’

Berg did not answer.

He listened to the sound of the car fade and then moved across the room to the bed. There was a long moment of silence, intensified by the noise the engine had just made.

‘Why do you take her word against mine?’ Berg asked.

Sbodin smiled: a slow smile that contained an element of cynicism, as if he had been a witness to everything life could conceivably demonstrate and nothing could any longer hold a surprise for him.

He said, ‘I don’t take anybody’s word, Berg. I gather together a mass of contradictory statements and try, bit by bit, to discover where the truth lies. I do a little digging. I probe a little. Perhaps I use a little force, whenever I think it’s essential.’

Force? For a second Berg experienced a sensation of fear.

What did force mean? He could not stand the thought of physical violence. The very idea of pain made him ill. He looked at Sbodin, seeking some sort of clue to the meaning of his statement but the man had turned his face away and was lighting another cigarette.

‘Then you don’t disbelieve me when I tell you that I didn’t rape her?’ Berg asked.

‘I only believe one thing, Berg. That she was raped. At this point in time, I don’t believe anything else.’

Berg restlessly got up from the bed. It was only then that he remembered he hadn’t eaten breakfast. His stomach felt tight and intolerably empty. He walked to the window. Outside, rain still fell against the streetlamp but was invisible in the dark areas where the light did not penetrate.

Sbodin said, ‘Why don’t you confess, Berg? In the long run, it would make things much easier all round. I can promise you that the magistrate is likely to be lenient if you confess now. In fact, I have here a document that you might seriously consider signing.’ He drew from his jacket a single sheet of flimsy paper and dropped it on the table. Berg glanced at it. He didn’t pick it up, nor did he read it; it was sufficient to see it there, threateningly, on the surface of the table.

‘How can I confess to something I didn’t do?’ he asked.

‘We all have to compromise sometimes,’ Sbodin said.

Compromise? It was more than that, Berg thought; it was a downright lie. He could not consider putting his signature to a false confession.

‘Nothing would make me sign that document,’ he said. ‘You can do whatever you like, but I won’t sign.’

Sbodin lifted his hand to his mouth and covered a yawn.

‘Well, we have to do everything the hard way.’

‘What do you mean—the hard way?’

Sbodin smiled, rose from the table and walked to the far side of the room where he leaned against the wall. ‘Look, Berg, we are both men of the world. I understand the situation perfectly. You live in the same house as an attractive young woman. She eats at the same table. She sleeps in the room next to yours. Perhaps you see her one day coming out of the bathroom and she’s wearing next to nothing. An attractive woman like that, it’s bound to make you think. Perhaps at night you hear her bed creak through the wall and you imagine her lying there all alone. Then you become friendly with her. You talk, go for walks, you might even hold her hand. Who knows? Suddenly, you realise you desire her. That’s when you discover that she’s not willing to go as far as you’d like. She stops short of bed. Right? You get a bit frustrated, you begin to get pent-up. I understand that. I’ve been in the same sort of position myself. Then one day you just can’t stand it any longer. Something inside you cracks. Bang. It’s not unusual. It happens all the time. Isn’t that how it happened? Cigarette?’

Berg took the cigarette that Sbodin offered and inhaled the smoke so deeply that he had a fit of coughing.

‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ he said. ‘The simple truth is—I didn’t have to rape her. She offered herself to me. She asked me to become her lover. She begged me. I didn’t have to rape her. It was all there if I wanted it.’

Sbodin laughed briefly. ‘Come on, Berg. Why should an attractive woman like Monika Jahn offer herself to you? You’re no oil painting.’

‘How should I know why she wanted me to be her lover?’

‘You refused her though? Now why did you do that?’

Berg shrugged. Something in the tone of Sbodin’s question suggested that he believed what Berg was telling him. For a split second Berg felt a surge of hope. If only Sbodin did believe him the whole thing could be cleared up in a matter of seconds.

‘Why did you refuse her?’ Sbodin again asked.

‘She didn’t appeal to me.’

‘Why? Are you homosexual?’

‘She simply didn’t appeal to me, that’s all.’

Sbodin laughed again. ‘It sounds like a pack of lies to me, Berg. First you ask me to believe that she begged you to become her lover. An attractive woman like that begging someone like you. Then you expect me to believe that you refused her. I find the whole thing hard to swallow.’

Berg sat on the bed and smoked the cigarette. ‘Believe what you like,’ he said. ‘I don’t care. When you find the person responsible I expect a full apology from you.’

Sbodin ran his hand over his face and yawned. ‘I’m tired. You work all hours in this job; you don’t get enough sleep; you get ulcers and too much abuse from people. Why do I do it? Why do you think I do it, Berg? Why don’t I get myself a nice, safe clerical post like the one you have, eh?’

Berg was silent. He refused to be enticed by the questions.

He ignored Sbodin’s plea for sympathy, which he didn’t think a genuine one in any case. Instead he sat silent and morose, thinking about the ache in his stomach.

‘Why have you been watching me?’ he asked.

‘I’m not watching you at all,’ Sbodin said, examining the tips of his fingers.

‘I saw you in the street, watching me from behind a newspaper. I want to know why. I have a right to know why.’

Sbodin smiled. ‘I think you’re mistaken, Berg. You may have seen me in the street, I wouldn’t deny that, but I hadn’t clapped eyes on you until this morning. In fact, I saw you for the first time about—what was it?—about thirty minutes ago. Anyway, why should I spend my valuable time observing you?’

Berg spread his hands and sighed. What was the point? Sbodin had only to deny it and it was almost as if it hadn’t taken place at all. The movement of the newspaper, the brief glance, the quick turn of face. And there was that other incident when he had been in the field with Monika, the dry, fearful feeling that he was being closely observed by someone unseen. Sbodin could have been there, too. He could have seen him lying with Monika under the tree. Of course it had all been perfecty innocent, but in the present situation Sbodin would put an interpretation on it that would twist it beyond recognition. Berg dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it.

‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘Am I allowed to have something to eat?’

‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Sbodin said. ‘We’ll go down to the kitchen. You can make me a cup of coffee.’

Berg led the way downstairs. The whole house felt intensely cold, as though it had lain uninhabited for years; unheated and uninhabited, to the extent that when he pushed open the kitchen door he expected to see dust everywhere and hear ancient ashes shift in the fireplace. Instead he saw, to his surprise and embarrassment, Lazlow sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of water.

Two

Lazlow stood up, removed his spectacles, sighed, and then began to examine the lenses as if he did not know quite what to say. To Berg, it seemed as if Lazlow found the situation beyond the scope of his experience and that the principles he used in his business life were quite inadequate now. Strangely, he looked smaller than he did in the office—or was this somehow a trick of the light? Berg stood in the doorway and waited for Lazlow to speak while Sbodin, whistling quietly to himself, found a kettle of water and placed it on the stove.

‘I came as soon as I learned,’ Lazlow said—like someone apologising for entering a private party. ‘As soon as I heard what had happened, I thought …’ And his voice trailed off. He turned to look at Sbodin but the investigator was busy with an old-fashioned device for lighting the stove.

Berg sat at the table. When he realised that Lazlow was embarrassed, he felt a sudden hope: could Lazlow speak up on his behalf and clear him of this absurd charge? Would he say that Berg, his employee, was a man dedicated to duty and well-mannered, not at all the sort of person to go round raping women?

‘Let’s all have some coffee,’ Sbodin said. He was yawning and making groaning noises, like a man about to tumble into bed and sleep round the clock. ‘I need something strong to waken me. How about you, Lazlow?’

‘Not for me, thank you,’ Lazlow said, and indicated that the glass of water in front of him was quite sufficient. Then he looked at Berg, sternly, like someone about to deliver a sermon. ‘How did you get yourself into this situation, Berg? When I heard I was quite astonished. It shook me. To be accused of a crime is one thing, but to be accused of a crime so heinous as this is quite another. How did it all happen?’

‘It’s a mistake,’ Berg said. ‘There’s been a terrible mistake.’

‘You’d better make some coffee,’ Sbodin said.

‘What sort of mistake?’ Lazlow asked. ‘How can they make a mistake like this? I don’t understand.’

Berg rose and went to the stove where he began to make coffee. For a moment he had his back to Lazlow and Sbodin and he had the strange feeling that they were whispering together. But when he turned to look he saw that Lazlow was staring at his glass of water and Sbodin was gazing from the window into the back garden. It was a silly thought: what could they possibly have to whisper about anyway?

‘You’d better explain, Berg,’ Lazlow said. ‘My superiors will expect me to make a report. God knows what I’m going to tell them—nothing like this has ever happened before.’

Berg prepared the coffee, poured two cups, and passed one to Sbodin.

‘There’s nothing to explain,’ he said. ‘It’s a mistake, it’s all a mistake.’

Lazlow looked at Sbodin. ‘Is that true?’

Sbodin shrugged. ‘The woman says that he raped her. He denies it. Choose for yourself.’

Lazlow made a strange noise at the back of his throat and removed his spectacles which he folded and placed on the table. He stared at them for a time as though in the transparency of the lenses he expected to find a solution to the problem set by Sbodin. After a time he said, ‘Well, Berg works for me and as his employer I consider it my duty to stand by him. If I failed to give him the support he obviously needs now, I would also have failed in my relationship with him. You do understand that, Mr Sbodin?’

Sbodin nodded his head and said, ‘Admirable.’

Berg, momentarily encouraged by Lazlow’s statement of support, smiled at his superior—but Lazlow looked solemn, fidgeted with his spectacles, and then began to walk up and down the room.

‘On the other hand,’ he said—and Berg felt a sinking sensation at these words—‘On the other hand, I’ve given the situation careful consideration while I’ve been sitting here, and I’m also bound by my duty as a lawful citizen to say that if it proves to be true that Berg raped the woman then I for one would not be surprised.’

Berg spilled some coffee on his hand and felt the liquid burn into his flesh, an exquisite pain.

‘Why wouldn’t you be surprised?’ Sbodin asked.

‘This is such … such a delicate situation, Mr Sbodin. Certainly I’ll tell you why it wouldn’t surprise me, but I don’t like the idea of criticising Berg’s character while he’s in the room.’

Sbodin said, ‘I don’t blame you. Would you prefer to tell me in private?’

Berg leaned forward. ‘Mr Lazlow please, I don’t quite understand … Why have you turned against me?’

Lazlow replaced his spectacles and stared at Berg coldly. ‘I wouldn’t say that I’ve turned against you, Berg. But I consider it my duty to tell Mr Sbodin everything I know about you as a person. If it helps him to solve this dreadful crime, then I would be delighted.’

Berg slumped back in his chair: the situation was slipping beyond his reach, he was fumbling around in a maze of motives and intentions, a mapless maze leading nowhere. Why should Lazlow turn cold on him? Why offer a moment of hope and then pull it away again? Did Lazlow honestly believe that he, Berg, was capable of such a deed? Berg stared at his hands; he had bitten his fingernails down as far as he could. What would happen to him if Sbodin proved, beyond any legal doubt, that he had raped the woman? He tried to remember the punishment for rape. Was it five years? Ten? Hard labour? Confinement with a collection of perverts? Death? The prospect terrified him. It was terrifying that it could be proved he had committed a crime of which he was innocent. After all, he was innocent. The dream, the dream he had had only a few hours ago—that was sheer coincidence. If you dreamed of raping someone, and someone was actually raped at the same time, it didn’t follow that you were responsible for it. A coincidence. Odd, yes. But there were a great many inexplicable things in the world.

Sbodin lit a cigarette, but this time did not offer the packet to Berg. ‘I’ll listen to whatever you have to tell me, Mr Lazlow. Naturally, if it helps to put the criminal into prison, I’ll be as delighted as you. In a case like this, any scrap of information is useful.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Lazlow said.

‘It’s of paramount importance that we establish first of all whether Berg is the sort of man capable of rape. Would you say that he is.’

Lazlow thought a moment. While he was silent Berg felt that he was poised on the edge of something terrible; he felt like a man dropping through the sky on a parachute that might not open.

‘Before I answer that question, allow me to summarise my opinion of Berg’s character,’ Lazlow said. ‘I’m not a trained judge of character, of course, but I like to think that my years in a position of some responsibility have sharpened my faculty for assessing people——’

‘No doubt they have,’ Sbodin said, looking at Berg as though expecting some fissure suddenly to reveal itself in the man’s facade, some opening that would crack Berg wide and make it impossible for him not to confess.

‘Let me tell you about Berg. Some time ago we had a vacancy in our office. The position was advertised in various employment bureaux in the district and I suppose because of a shortage of trained clerks locally, the response was very poor. The post was then passed through to our central employment office, more in hope than anything else. Berg saw it and applied. He had been to university, wrote in a legible hand, and was interviewed successfully by a representative in the capital. To cut a long story short, the job was offered to him and he accepted. I thought it strange at the time that someone should want to leave the capital and come as far north as this district.’

‘Oh, very strange,’ Sbodin said.

‘What is even stranger is that he has not really given a satisfactory reason for leaving the capital except that when I asked him he muttered something very vague about wanting a change——’

‘That’s all,’ Berg said, ‘I simply wanted——’

‘Do not interrupt me, Berg. Let me continue. Within a few days it became clear to me that a rather unfortunate appointment had been made. But, in the circumstances, I was willing to make the best of it. However, Berg has demonstrated to me, beyond doubt, that he’s an impetuous, rash, and rather foolish man.’

‘How did you reach this conclusion?’ Sbodin asked. Ominously, he had taken a notebook from his pocket and was writing in shorthand.

‘Simply because he had been given a splendid career opportunity but seemed quite unable to grasp it in both hands. He was impatient to make advancement. He wanted everything too soon. When I tried to help him he refused my assistance. I was fair to him in all ways, I was always available to advise him, but every time I made a concession in his favour he was dissatisfied because he wanted more. You appreciate the nature of our work, Mr Sbodin, and the sheer necessity of a certain amount of secrecy, don’t you? Berg, impetuous as ever, could not understand this need. On his first day, his very first day, he made an unauthorised call to the Site Agent.’

‘The Site Agent,’ Sbodin said, surprised.

‘What the reason behind this was, I still don’t understand. But I suspect that since Berg is both impetuous and ambitious he imagined it might be to his advantage to make himself known to the Agent. Have you heard anything so foolish? Have you?’

Astonished, Berg could only listen. The things he wanted to say, the protestations he wanted to make, lay unformed on a tongue that had suddenly become too dry for speech. Was Lazlow insane? Hadn’t he explained that the telephone call to the Site Agent had been a mistake?

‘Of course,’ Lazlow said, growing red in the face, ‘he tried to excuse himself. He claimed it was a mistake, that he’d picked up the telephone accidentally. Have you heard anything so feeble? As if that isn’t bad enough in itself, he attempted to get information about the Site from my secretary, Miss Selz, and when this failed, he turned his attention to me. Concessions were made to him at every turn. I leaned over backwards to help him, I tried to make him see sense. But he was impertinent, he wanted to make successful headway overnight. Impertinent, stuffed with a sense of his own importance, and much too impatient for his own good—that was my impression of Berg.’

Sbodin closed his notebook. ‘That’s extremely interesting.’

Berg looked at his fingers; the bitten fingernails, the brown stains, the thin sweat between the fingers—they were no longer his hands, there was something strange about them. They were pale, nearly white, like the hands of a dead man. Was that why Lazlow had constantly referred to him in the past tense? As if he no longer existed? Or was the past tense reference only an indication that he had been dismissed from his post? He did not know; at that moment he did not particularly care either. His head was buzzing with what Lazlow had been saying. How was it possible to interpret things the way Lazlow had done? His analysis was crammed with misjudgements, errors of interpretation, blind, silly mistakes. Berg undid the top buttons of his shirt. In the cold house he was sweating.

Lazlow stopped by the window. ‘That is only my opinion Mr Sbodin. True or false, you have it for what it’s worth. Impetuous, full of his own importance, impertinent—does a man like that commit a rape? I don’t know. I don’t know.’ He was shaking his head back and forth, sighing continually as though in sheer despair for the whole of mankind.

Berg banged his hand on the table. To his surprise, he found his eyes blurred with tears. Somewhere out there Lazlow flickered behind the blur, moving back and forward like a fly on the window. ‘You’re wrong, you’re totally wrong! You say I was impatient—but that was only because I was frustrated.’

Sbodin flicked open the notebook. ‘Frustrated, eh?’ he asked, and wrote something down.

‘And you know that I had no intention of calling the Site Agent. It was a mistake. I explained it at the time. I explained all that!’

Lazlow looked at Berg and made a gesture of dismissal.

‘Let us not have another scene, Berg.’

Berg got to his feet in anger. Tears were running over his face and the room, the cold kitchen, seemed to explode within his field of vision. ‘I could tell Mr Sbodin about a very interesting little scene that I witnessed, Lazlow. I could tell him about you and Miss Selz.’

‘Me and Miss Selz?’ Lazlow smiled faintly, half-amused.

Berg turned to Sbodin. ‘Do you know that he makes love to Miss Selz on his office desk? I saw her lying on top of his desk. She was naked and he was——’ He paused; even as he was saying this he knew it sounded ridiculous. Lazlow and Sbodin were looking at each other.

Sbodin said. ‘How did you manage to see this?’

‘Through the keyhole,’ Berg said.

‘Do you often look through keyholes?’

‘No, I don’t, but I happened to see him and Miss Selz together. She was naked, she was lying across his desk, naked.’

Sbodin scribbled something in his notebook. He looked at Lazlow and smiled. ‘What do you have to say to this accusation?’

Lazlow shrugged. ‘Do I need to say anything? Berg is obviously an imaginative man. But is it likely, is it really likely, that I’d make love on my office desk? Apart from the fact that it would be quite uncomfortable, I’m a happily married man and Miss Selz is my own niece.’

‘Your niece?’ Berg asked. ‘But I saw you, I saw both of you. I don’t care if she’s your niece or not, it was obvious what you were doing——’

Sbodin interrupted; ‘I ought to warn you, Berg. You may be going too far. Please think very carefully before you make any more statements about Mr Lazlow. He’s a man of some standing in the district and ridiculous tales like this can only lead to senseless gossip. I understand perfectly why you fabricated this story. You realise the desperation of your position—but stories of that sort aren’t going to help you any. Think again, Berg. Be careful what you say.’

Berg sat down. What was the point of saying anything? Lazlow and Sbodin were against him, both of them, both for some reason bent on his destruction.

‘A malicious thing to say,’ Lazlow said and looked at his watch. ‘A malicious and dangerous lie. You see the kind of man he is, Mr Sbodin.’

Sbodin snapped his notebook shut. He brought the document he had shown Berg before from his pocket and asked, ‘Are you prepared to sign now?’

Berg looked at Sbodin’s eyes and saw reflected in them his own sense of helplessness. He stared at the document Sbodin was offering him; that same flimsy sheet which, if he signed, would testify to his guilt. For a second he felt like signing it, if only to bring this elaborate charade to a close—if only to see what the next move was in the hideous game. He thought of what he had seen through the keyhole: yes, yes, he really had seen Miss Selz sprawled across that desk and Lazlow hovering above her, like a hungry man unable to choose at a sudden feast. He had seen it all; he was certain of it.

‘No, I can’t sign it,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in asking me.’ And he looked at Lazlow in the vague hope that the man might relent and change sides, retracing the damaging statement he had made. But, polishing his spectacles, Lazlow seemed to have lost interest in the proceedings. He looked at his watch, tapped his fingers impatiently and went to the window.

‘You won’t sign it, Berg?’ Sbodin asked.

Berg shook his head.

‘Are you prepared to withdraw the malicious remarks you made about Miss Selz and myself?’ Lazlow asked. Now he was smiling thinly; the situation was entirely in his favour.

‘I know what I saw,’ Berg said.

‘Very well. You leave me without a choice.’ Lazlow pulled on his gloves. ‘I shall recommend your dismissal as from today. And if you imagine that you’ll get any assistance from me, you’re quite mistaken. It seems quite clear to me that you’re the man Mr Sbodin is looking for—why deny it any further?’

Nodding his head to Sbodin, Lazlow walked towards the door. There he stood for a moment glaring at Berg with an expression of indignant reproach as though not only the crime but the man too were quite beyond his understanding. His spectacles glinted. Berg had the sudden impression that the eyes behind the lenses were aflame, burning in the sockets.

‘I don’t think I can add anything more at this stage,’ Lazlow said and opened the door. He moved stiffly. He moved like a man conscious of dragging some dreadful burden.

Sbodin smiled and said, ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

When Lazlow had gone there was a silence. Sbodin folded the document and put it away.

‘I’m beginning to get an impression of the kind of man you are, Berg. Lazlow has always been a good judge of character. If you hadn’t told that ridiculous story against him, he might have been of some help to you. But there’s no chance now. You’re on your own.’

Sbodin looked into his empty cup. ‘Do you believe that you can tell the future from coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup?’

Berg said nothing.

‘According to these, I’m due for a change in my luck. What do you think it could be, Berg? A nice long holiday? Or am I going to prove that you raped this unfortunate girl, once and for all?’

Berg walked up and down the room. It all seemed so damned silly: what had got into Lazlow? What had made Lazlow want to crucify him? Hadn’t he worked hard at the office? Hadn’t he been reasonably patient in the face of so much frustration and bureaucratic hostility? Then why, for God’s sake, should Lazlow—behaving like some wounded creature—turn on him now?

‘Surely you don’t believe what Lazlow said about me?’

Sbodin studied his hands with meticulous care, turning them over and over. After a time he said, ‘I told you, Berg, I simply gather statements. Like the pieces of a jigsaw. When I put them all together I try to see what the picture looks like.’

Berg sighed. The truth about things seemed to him like a bottomless well: you could stand forever at the top and drop stones down into the darkness without once hearing the splash of water. He sat at the window and looked into the garden. A faint wind came up and made the shrubbery move.

‘Let’s go back upstairs,’ Sbodin said.

Three

He felt Sbodin push him hard into the room and before he realised what was happening he heard a key turn in the lock. He turned round and banged his hands on the wood. On the other side of the door Sbodin was laughing quietly.

‘You’ve got no right to lock me in here,’ Berg said. ‘Unless you specifically charge me with a crime, you can’t keep me prisoner like this. I know my rights.’

Sbodin continued to laugh and when he at last stopped there was a long silence. Inside the room Berg could hear him walk up and down on the landing, his heavy boots hammering on the wood.

‘Open the door. I insist that you open the door.’

Sbodin said nothing. After a time there was the sound of his footsteps on the stairs. Berg battered the door with his fists.

‘Open the door. Open the damned door,’ he shouted.

When the sound of the footsteps faded Berg went to the window and looked out. Below, he saw Sbodin leaving the house and turning into the street. He threw open the window and called after him.

‘Come back. You can’t leave me here like this!’

Sbodin did not even look round. He turned his collar up against the rain and pulled his hat down and continued to walk. When he was finally out of sight Berg closed the window and sat down on the bed. There was a pain at the back of his throat. He looked round the room, suddenly conscious now of the empty house. What was Sbodin’s idea? Was he supposed to remain here until sheer hunger and fatigue forced him to confess? He rose from the bed and went to the door. Uselessly he struck at the wood until the edges of his hands were sore. Then he raised his feet and kicked at the bottom panel of the door until the paint had been scraped from the wood. Tired, he went back to the bed and lay down. He saw from his clock that it was eleven thirty. Outside, although the sky was marginally brighter, there was an incongruous edge of darkness to the day.

He closed his eyes and slept for a time. When he woke it was just after one. He felt unbearably hungry—but it was a futile longing since there was nothing in the room to eat. He looked around. What if Sbodin did not return until tomorrow? Or the day after that? What if he failed to return again? For a second Berg had the harrowing feeling that he was the butt of some insane practical joke, that everything had been staged and contrived simply to make him look a fool—Monika’s rape, Sbodin’s investigation, Lazlow’s appearance. That was a nonsensical thought; it was much too elaborate to be a practical joke. Besides, what would be the point of it?

He went over to the window and looked into the street. He supposed he could get out through the window and slither down the side of the sharply sloping roof to the street, but it seemed risky. For one thing, the slates did not look strong and secure enough to carry his weight; for another he had never had a head for heights. Even the twenty or so feet to the ground made him nervous. He turned away from the window and walked to the door. He was about to hammer on the wood when he remembered that his hands still ached from the last attempt. Instead, he put his ear to the door and listened. Perhaps while he had been asleep someone had entered the house. Sbodin, possibly. Even Mrs Jacobitz, who would presumably return sometime.

He heard nothing. There was complete and utter silence. He could not remember when he had last felt so isolated. Once, possibly, when his mother had locked him in a cupboard for some trivial misdemeanour. Then it had been entirely dark save for a single pinpoint of light coming under the door. Now, perhaps because of the light and the occasional sounds from the street, this isolation was all the more terrible. He thought again of going out through the window, and then it occurred to him that perhaps Sbodin wanted him to do this. Perhaps the whole thing was a trap. Perhaps he would discover, when he dropped to the ground, that Sbodin was waiting for him below. He might even find himself arrested for trying to run away.

He was terribly hungry. Kneeling on the floor, he kept his ear to the keyhole in the forlorn hope that he would catch some sound. If only he could get to the kitchen where he knew there was food. Even a cigarette would be a consolation now. He went back to the bed and lay down. He drummed his fingers on the side of the mattress. After some time he fell asleep again. He dreamed vaguely of being pursued by his mother although he knew in the dream that the person following him looked nothing like his mother. Why then did he imagine it was his mother pursuing him? The question bothered him, just as the dream did, but when he woke he remembered very little of it.

Sbodin was sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette.

‘Enjoy your sleep?’

Berg rubbed his eyes and sat up. The daylight seemed suddenly very harsh and for a moment he could not focus on the other man.

‘Why did you lock me in this room?’ he asked. ‘It’s illegal to keep someone a prisoner unless you charge them with something, and I haven’t been charged with anything. I’m perfectly within my rights to complain——’

‘Complain about what?’ Sbodin asked. He looked puzzled.

‘About being kept prisoner here——’

‘I didn’t keep you prisoner here, Berg. There must be some misunderstanding. When we came up to the room you lay down on the bed and fell fast asleep. I don’t really see what you’ve got to complain about——’

‘Look, you locked the door. You pushed me into the room and you locked the door. I shouted after you. You stood out there laughing and then you went away——’

Sbodin smiled. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nobody has kept you a prisoner, Berg. Anyway, if I had charged you with a crime, you would have been taken to the local jail. That’s where I keep my prisoners. I don’t allow them to remain in their own homes——’

Berg got up from the bed and went to the door. He looked at the surface of the wood from which he had scraped the paint.

‘How do you explain that? How do you explain those scrapes? I made them myself when I kicked the door after you’d gone——’

He looked once more at the marks on the door and then walked to the table. He stared at the investigator, but something in the other man’s expression—some inherent power in the eyes—made him look away.

Sbodin said, ‘Let’s drop this. We’ve got more important things to discuss.’

Berg said nothing. Of course: it was all perfectly obvious. It was another of Sbodin’s techniques—confuse the accused, confuse him to the extent where he can no longer tell the difference between the reality and the fantasy. Well, he would not be taken. If Sbodin wanted to confuse him he would have to try much harder than that. Did he think he was dealing with an idiot?

‘What do we have to talk about now?’

Sbodin drew a sheet of paper from his pocket and spread it on the table. ‘While you were asleep, one of my colleagues brought me this. I think it will prove to be a significant piece of evidence. Do you recognise it?’

Sbodin held the paper up. Berg recognised his own black handwriting, the cramped, elegant letters, the exaggerated slant. For a moment he could not place the piece of paper and then all at once he remembered: it was the official complaints form that he had started to complete not so long ago. But how did it come to be in Sbodin’s possession? He recalled that when he had decided against making the complaint he had thrown the half-completed form into the waste-basket. Someone obviously had rescued it from there—but who? He could only think of Miss Selz. She might have waited until he had gone from the room and then retrieved the form. After that, she would almost certainly have taken it to Lazlow. Perhaps while they were lying on his desk she had produced it and then they had discussed it together.

‘Yes, I recognise it,’ he said to Sbodin.

‘Do you remember what you wrote?’

‘Not exactly. I was angry when I wrote it.’

‘Don’t you remember the things you do when you’re angry?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘That’s a bit dangerous, isn’t it?’

Berg had a painfully empty feeling in his stomach. ‘I’d like to have something to eat.’

‘After we’ve discussed this you can go down to the kitchen and make yourself something.’

‘Can’t I do it now?’

Sbodin passed the form to Berg and then, sitting back in his chair, asked him to read it aloud. Berg looked at the sheet. It was his own handwriting, there was no doubt of that.

‘Read it,’ Sbodin said. ‘Begin with the code number and read the whole thing.’

Berg stared at the sheet. The words seemed to shed all meaning in front of his eyes; the letters were suddenly alive, moving across the page, black letters crowding other black letters as if someone had spilled ink over the paper. He closed his eyes.

‘I can’t.’

‘Read it,’ Sbodin said and raised his voice. He rose impatiently from the table and began to walk up and down the room. ‘Hurry up. I’m waiting.’

‘No, I can’t,’ Berg said.

Sbodin snatched the sheet from him and held it a moment.

‘What’s wrong with you? Are you ashamed to read what you’ve written? Is that it?’

Berg kept his eyes closed. Locked in darkness he did not have to look at Sbodin. Why did the man unnerve him so much anyway? An ordinary investigator in a backward district? A man whose idea of subtlety was to lock a suspect in a room and then deny later that he had done so? Berg opened his eyes slightly and saw that Sbodin was staring at him. The stare caught and held him; it was as if he were imprisoned in the expression, shuttered behind the cold glare of the man’s eyes.

‘You are ashamed, Berg. You’re ashamed of what it says here—in your own handwriting. Do you want me to read it?’

Berg nodded his head. Even that small movement seemed to weaken him. He watched Sbodin return to the table and put the sheet down. And then he began to read:

‘Code number 4 OC. I want to tell this whole organisation how frustrated I am. I want everyone to know how much I desire Monika Jahn.’

Sbodin was then silent for a bit. Berg, his eyes fixed to the window, heard the faint rustle of paper, the scape of the man’s breath as he sighed, the creak of his boots as he moved his feet. Had he heard properly? He could not recall ever having written anything like that. It simply wasn’t true!

‘Let me see that paper,’ he said.

Sbodin held it out. ‘What’s wrong, Berg? Do you want to make sure it’s in your own handwriting?’

Berg snatched the sheet and stared at it. The message on it was exactly as Sbodin had read it. He went to the window and held it flat against the light and read it again—as if in the light he would be able to detect a forgery. He examined the handwriting closely. It looked like his own, certainly. And if he had been able to remember writing the words on the sheet then he would have claimed it as his own—but he had no such memory. ‘I want everyone to know how much I desire Monika Jahn.’ He had never written anything like that. He was certain of the fact. Turning to Sbodin he said,

‘This is a very clever forgery. One thing I know for sure is that I never wrote it.’

Sbodin laughed. ‘You’re a very stupid man, Berg. Any handwriting expert in the country would testify that this is your own handwriting. I fail to see why you continually deny things. Are you so stupid? First you deny raping the woman. Secondly you concoct some idiotic story about Lazlow and his secretary. Thirdly you claim that I kept you prisoner in this room. And now, faced with this overwhelming evidence, you say that you didn’t write it at all.’ Sbodin opened a packet of cigarettes but didn’t take one out; instead he left the pack open on the table as though to taunt Berg. He laughed again. ‘I don’t blame you for trying to get out of a tight spot. But I don’t understand why you’re so stupid about it.’

Berg lay on the bed. He was trembling. He felt terribly weak. Any moment now he thought he might faint. Briefly he recalled that his mother had once told him he would probably die in the end of a heart attack, since that was how his father had died and the complaint was hereditary. At the time he had dismissed this as yet another aspect of his mother’s morbid hypochondria. Now, listening to the monstrous sound of his heart pumping in his chest, he was not so sure. What could that kind of death be like? A pain in the chest, a creeping numbness—and then nothing.

‘The point I want to make, Berg, is that if you’re going to come out of this whole sordid business with your reputation intact, you’ll have to do much better than you’ve done so far. How can you conceivably deny that this is your own handwriting?’

Berg said, ‘All right, I admit that it looks like my hand. But I don’t remember writing anything like that. I wouldn’t have written anything like that.’

‘How can you tell? You said you were angry when you wrote the form. You said you didn’t remember what you had written. How can you be sure that this isn’t what you wrote?’

‘But why should I write something like that? It’s nonsense. I had a complaint about my job. It was nothing to do with Monika Jahn——’

‘I suggest your frustration at work was simply the result of another sort of frustration. That’s why you wrote this. You desired the woman. You couldn’t have her. So you took out your frustrations——’

‘No,’ Berg said. ‘None of this is true. It’s a forgery. I didn’t write anything like that.’

Suddenly Sbodin moved towards the bed and caught him by the shoulders. Berg’s first reaction was surprise that such a big man could move so quickly.

‘Admit it. Make it easier on yourself.’

Sbodin started to shake him back and forth, his fingers digging into Berg’s shoulder. Berg tried desperately to think: what had he written on the sheet? But the pain from the pressure of Sbodin’s grip was unbearable. He tried to shake himself free. The investigator held on tightly, pushing Berg back and forward, rocking him effortlessly.

‘Why don’t you just sign my document, Berg? That would put the magistrate firmly on your side when you come up for trial. Why don’t you just sign?’

Berg pulled himself free. A trickle of blood from his shoulder appeared through the material of his shirt.

‘Get your clever forger to do it,’ he said.

Sbodin sighed. Perspiration ran along his brow, over his nose.

‘I don’t know any clever forgers,’ he said.

‘My shoulder hurts.’

‘It won’t kill you.’

There was a long silence, broken eventually by the sound of a car in the street. It passed the house, its horn rattling harshly as if in celebration of some misdeed. The noise echoed in Berg’s head and he remembered his hunger.

‘I want something to eat.’

Sbodin got up. They went together to the door. Berg rubbed his shoulder and turned to the investigator, and as he turned an irrational thought went through his head: suppose this man weren’t an investigator at all? Suppose he wasn’t what he claimed to be? Berg hadn’t seen any document to support the man’s identity, he hadn’t been shown any warrant card. Simply, a man turns up in his room, accuses him of a crime, and calls himself an investigator. Where was the proof of this? It was on the tip of his tongue to say something when Sbodin gently raised his hand to Berg’s bleeding shoulder.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I must have been carried away. It happens sometimes in this kind of work. Sometimes you can get carried away without realising it.’ He paused on the landing. From somewhere came the sound of rain hammering on a piece of tin. Berg raised his head. Above, set in the roof, was a glass skylight smeared with streaks of rainwater.

‘Let’s see what there is to eat,’ Sbodin said. ‘And let’s forget all this nonsense about locked doors and forged handwriting. What do you say?’

Berg said nothing. He went downstairs in front of Sbodin. The investigator was whistling quietly to himself in that way he had—more of a tuneless whisper than a whistle.

Four

In the kitchen Berg found some sausages in a piece of wrapping paper and fried them on the stove. They were hard and probably mouldy, but for once he was too hungry to be particular. While he cooked them, Sbodin sat by the window and stared morosely into the garden.

‘It’s like a bloody jungle,’ he said once. And then he was silent until Berg brought the sausages to the table. He ate noisily as if he hadn’t seen food for weeks, cutting the sausages almost savagely and sliding them around the plate in their own grease. When he was finished he sat back and belched quietly. He lit a cigarette, belched again, and watched Berg eat.

‘You haven’t told me anything about your background,’ he said.

‘Background?’ Berg pushed his plate away. Although painfully hungry before, he was unable to finish the meal. He looked at the half-eaten sausages and the discarded skins that lay crumpled on the side of his plate.

‘The sort of home you come from. What your parents are like. What school you went to. That sort of thing. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?’

Berg instinctively mistrusted this question. It seemed to him that Sbodin was asking something altogether different—not quite the question he had phrased, but another one, although Berg could not think what. He was reluctant to talk about himself. When you did, you invariably gave something away. You revealed all sorts of things that you wanted to keep to yourself. He rose from the table and straightening himself slowly said,

‘There isn’t much to tell you.’

‘I find that hard to believe,’ Sbodin said. ‘I’m pretty sure you’ve led an interesting life. What are your parents like?’

‘My father died when I was born. There’s only my mother.’

‘Only your mother?’ Sbodin placed the tips of his fingers together in a gesture that seemed to Berg uncharacteristic. ‘And do you get along with her?’

‘Of course.’

‘What I really mean is—would you say that your relationship with her is a normal mother-son one?’

Berg turned to the investigator as though he expected to detect in the man’s expression the true meaning of his question—but Sbodin was impassive, his eyes half-shut.

‘Naturally,’ Berg said.

‘How do you get on with other women?’

‘What other women?’

‘Girl friends, mistresses, that sort of thing.’

‘As well as anyone, I suppose.’

Sbodin took out his little notebook and, licking his thumb, began to flick over the pages. He didn’t write anything, he merely stared at something he had written there before.

‘Let me be more specific, Berg. When you go out with a woman, do you expect to take her to bed that same evening?’

Berg had a sensation of nagging anxiety and his mind seemed suddenly to go blank. When you go out with a woman do you expect to take her to bed that same evening? The question went round and round in his head. He stared at Sbodin, then at the window, then at the various kitchen objects around him. He found himself thinking of his mother and an incident that had once taken place—when?—some years ago. He had taken a girl home, someone whose name and face he could no longer remember, and his mother, seeing the girl wander through their apartment making sounds of approbation, suddenly had a heart attack. At least she claimed to have one. She dropped to the floor, scattering pills and bottles in a mad cacophony of noise, and lay there with her breath coming in sharp bursts, her hands about her own throat like someone seeking to strangle himself.

‘Well?’ Sbodin asked.

‘I don’t know how to answer that,’ Berg said. He remembered the girl screaming in alarm and that was where his recollection of the incident faded. With the scream, the single solitary sound that raked through the rooms of the apartment like an unending cry of pain and despair. And after that? Had he called for a doctor? Had he administered one of the sacred tablets? Had he stood, looking down at the hideous face of his mother, not knowing what to do? He couldn’t remember. There was a mist, a screen drawn across the memory.

‘Are you good in bed?’ Sbodin asked.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Do you please your women?’

‘Please them?’ Berg felt his anxiety rising to a panic. He wanted to get out of the house, get away from Sbodin and his endless asking.

‘Do you give them what they want and do they come back asking for more?’

‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’

Sbodin laughed: a sound like the burst of machine-gun fire. Berg stopped in the centre of the room. All this time he had been walking up and down, crossing and recrossing the floor, working his hands together. He felt drained. He sat down and looked at Sbodin’s face for some clue to the laughter.

‘Do you know what I think, Berg? I don’t believe you had a woman until Monika Jahn. That’s my opinion.’

‘That’s nonsense. Of course I’ve had other women.’

‘Other women before Monika Jahn?’

‘Other women. I never had Monika. I swear to you.’

Sbodin flicked the pages of his notebook again and Berg strained to see what was written there. He caught a glimpse but it was a kind of shorthand that he couldn’t read. Sbodin closed the notebook and shut his eyes. Yawning, he began to massage the sides of his face.

‘I get so exhausted,’ he said. He yawned again. His mouth stretched open, his nose went briefly out of shape. ‘This job exhausts me sometimes.’

Berg felt a sense of relief. Perhaps Sbodin was going home for some sleep. He waited for some sign from the investigator. Having been still for a moment, Sbodin worked his fingers into the muscles of his shoulders, sighing continually as he did so.

‘What about your politics, Berg?’

‘I don’t have any.’

‘You never joined the party?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Politics don’t interest me.’

‘Ah. How could you expect any advancement in your career if you aren’t a party member?’

‘It didn’t occur to me that the two are related.’

Sbodin closed his eyes and kept them shut as he talked. ‘Then you’re naive.’

‘I don’t think I am.’

‘I have a theory about you, Berg. Let me explain. You realised that you couldn’t have a successful career without being a party member. With this in mind, you made attempts to join the party, but these were unsuccessful. So you took the only job you could get—namely, as a clerk in Lazlow’s office. Day after day, you became more and more aware that because you didn’t have a party card you were doomed to spend your life as a petty clerk——’

‘I wasn’t a petty clerk. The job was an important one——’

‘Don’t interrupt me. You were doomed to this drudgery. Naturally you became frustrated. No matter how hard you tried to advance you kept banging your head on a brick wall. Day by day, the frustration built up inside you. You began to make a nuisance of yourself in the office, asking questions you had no right to ask, expecting answers you had no right to expect. The more you became frustrated, the more you made yourself a nuisance. And now, because of your frustrations, you’re in your present difficult position.’

‘That’s not true. You know——’

‘Please, let me continue. You’re in this dreadful position through your own actions. You were tired of meeting obstruction, you didn’t have the guile to defeat the obstacles in your path, and you were nothing more than a piddling little clerk with a boring job. So you react in the only way you can. You want attention. You act as if you want to be noticed. Your whole life has been a cry for attention. You rape Monika—it brings you notoriety. You accuse Lazlow of adultery—it brings you attention. Your whole life, Berg, your whole existence, everything you do and say can be translated into two words—Notice Me.’

Berg got up from his chair and stumbled angrily around the room. It was preposterous. Did Sbodin really believe all this? This … this nonsense? Did he? He walked to the window, turned round, could not bring himself to look at the investigator’s face.

‘You bloody liar!’ he shouted. ‘You can’t believe all that!’

Sbodin calmly lit a cigarette. He said nothing for a time, seemingly content to watch Berg’s rage burn itself out. Berg pressed his hands up against the window and pushed at the glass. He tried to control himself. Why should he let Sbodin’s words upset him? He hadn’t been a mundane little clerk. His whole life wasn’t a cry for attention. He didn’t care if people noticed him or if they didn’t. He wasn’t such a slave that he had to care about the things other people thought of him. He was an independent human being, fettered now—temporarily—because of other people’s stupidity, but an independent person just the same. He forced his hands against the glass and did not know if he wanted to break it out of frustration, or out of a desire to get through it and flee. When the pane snapped and shards of glass fell away into the rain like the broken colours of a kaleidoscope he stepped back and looked at the ragged hole he had made. It wasn’t large enough to pass through, he would cut his body if he even tried.

Sbodin said, ‘Mrs Jacobitz will love you for that. First her niece. Now her window. What next?’

Berg turned. If he could break the investigator as easily as he had broken the glass—— He turned and twisted his hands together. Suddenly it seemed to him that this had been the longest day in his life. He wanted to call his mother for help but realised the futility of that. What could she do? What good could come of it? He envisaged his cry for help falling on her deaf ears and saw her white face numbly, blankly, staring at the alien words on his agonised letter.

Sbodin examined the window as if to be certain that it had truly been broken. He ran his fingers softly on the rim of the jagged glass and sighed. ‘You’re a violent man. Berg.’

‘It was an accident. I didn’t exactly mean to break——’

‘No excuses. I saw it.’

‘It was an accident.’

‘No. I wouldn’t call it that. I saw you smash it with your fist.’ The investigator tutted and turned his back away. Now Berg had the feeling that he was being mocked, that his pathetic protest—shattering the glass—was being ridiculed. He followed Sbodin across the room.

‘I’d like a cigarette,’ he said.

Sbodin took out his packet and opened it, holding it towards Berg. ‘How badly?’

‘I want to smoke. I need to smoke.’

‘But how badly?’

‘Badly enough.’

Sbodin counted the cigarettes in the packet. ‘Perhaps I can afford to let you have one.’

‘I only want one.’

Sbodin took out one of the cigarettes and raised it in the air.

‘I didn’t lock you in your room, did I?’

Berg, shaking, stared at the cigarette.

‘I didn’t get someone to forge your writing, did I?’

Berg caught his breath. How could a white cylindrical object obliterate everything else in the world? He made a gesture with his head.

‘Speak up, Berg. I can’t hear you.’

‘Please, the cigarette.’

‘Answer my questions first.’

Berg said, ‘You didn’t lock me in my room. You didn’t forge my writing. The cigarette, please.’

Sbodin brought his hand down, dropping the cigarette from his fingers. It struck the table and rolled across the floor beneath the stove. Berg watched it disappear and then, on his knees, groped under the stove for it. In the narrow, dark space his fingers encountered a conglomeration of sticky objects—of grease, congealed fat, pieces of bone, scraps of paper, twisted tissues, matches. He was sickened. He brought out the cigarette, cleaned it, and put it in his mouth. He felt like closing his eyes and drifting away—if only he could have drifted, out through the window, down across the town, away. It was disgusting, grovelling amongst filth for a cigarette. Sbodin tossed him a box of matches and trembling he struck one, holding it to the cigarette. He sucked smoke deeply and felt immediately sick and dizzy. The dizziness seemed to transport him across the room, as if he were floating. It was like the feeling of the dream, rising up like a bird and moving across a barren landscape. Dark shapes moved in front of his eyes.

Sbodin said, ‘You smoke too much, Berg.’

Berg coughed. He hated the investigator. He hated the man for the way he probed and the way he punished.

‘I have a colleague in the city. I sent him a cable this morning asking for some information about you. It should be interesting to hear what he finds out, don’t you think?’

‘What sort of information?’ Berg asked—all too quickly. Something in him caused a brief flare of panic. But what? The mention of the word city? The thought that somehow this man Sbodin had connections with the capital? The realisation that the very place he had left still had some relevance to his life?

‘Who knows? Perhaps he’ll come up with something interesting.’

Something interesting, Berg thought—but what? He walked around the room, drawing on the cigarette. It seemed to him that he was looking for something, that he was turning over stones in his mind as if in search of a vital, missing object. Moving this way and that, half-formed images went through his head in sequences of puzzlement. Bewildered, he went to the window and stared out at the jumbled garden and the sparrows that flitted through the rain, rising up from damp, springing branches, whirling upwards into the trees. Through the broken pane came a motion of cold air that froze against his sweat. Sbodin had a colleague in the city to whom he had sent a cable; an electric message tapped out on a machine, whispering across tangled miles of wire, a message that would take—what?—three, four hours to reach the capital. Berg moved away from the window. The chill seemed to have entered his brain. Something about the thought of the cable nagged him, stirred up in his brain a hundred old anxieties, none of which he could name. He felt like a blind man in an unfamiliar room, fumbling amongst objects he can neither see nor identify. A flash of panic, sweat on his forehead, numb images chasing each other like circus clowns through his brain. It would take four hours for a cable to reach the capital—why was that length of time suddenly and bewilderingly important to him? What was it about Sbodin’s colleague that worried him? As if exhausted by his own thoughts he went to the table and sat down.

Sbodin was examining his fingers in silence. From time to time he would raise one to his mouth and bite the flesh. Then, tired of the one hand, he would start on the other. This went on for some time while Berg sat with his eyes closed and smoked the cigarette. He imagined the smoke swirling around in his chest, billowing as if blown by an invisible wind through the dying cells of his body. Dying? Now why had he thought of it like that? He stared at the investigator as though afraid that Sbodin had been conscious of his thoughts. He vaguely remembered his mother, long ago, had warned him of lung cancer.

‘Anyway, if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to worry about,’ Sbodin said. ‘The innocent never suffer pangs of guilt, do they?’

Berg didn’t feel like talking. He dropped his cigarette and stamped on it. He thought about the cable again and wondered exactly what words Sbodin had used. And then he thought of the electric wires that transported the cable to the city. There it would be received in some sort of machine and deciphered. It would reach Sbodin’s colleague and a whole new process would begin. It was strange to think that a man he didn’t know was about to examine his life. Some faceless stranger blundering into his past, questioning, searching, sifting through written records and other people’s memories, treading heavily on recollected speeches and actions—and no doubt misinterpreting them. It was strange to think all this and he had the sensation you get when you say that someone is walking over your grave. Sitting there, he shivered. As he shivered he received a peculiar image: it was of himself as a young child, of six or seven, walking in a park. Far away, shimmering like a column of heat, he saw his mother. As he approached she began to fade amongst the trees. He went forward, pushing through shrubbery that sprang back into his face, through thorns that tore his flesh—and then Sbodin’s voice cut across the picture.

‘Do you want another cigarette?’

‘Am I supposed to beg for it again?’

Sbodin made a noise of surprise and then was silent. He picked up the packet that lay on the table and stuffed it into his pocket. Sighing heavily three or four times, he rose and went out of the room. Berg watched him go through the door.

‘Where are you going?’

Sbodin made an unintelligible reply. Berg got up and followed him into another room he had never seen before. He assumed it was Mrs Jacobitz’s. It was furnished in a glacial way; everything was immaculately in place, there was nothing to prove that anyone had ever lived there. The bed was tidily made. Along the dressing-table were several boxes, a comb stuck in a hairbrush, an imitation pearl necklace neatly folded. On the wall hung a photograph of a man who had been snapped in an expression of surprise. Sbodin stopped in the middle of the floor and looked around as if conscious of the fact that he had entered the wrong room.

‘Where are you going?’ Berg asked. ‘Whose room——?’

Sbodin ignored him. Holding up a hand to silence him, he stared at his own face in the mirror.

‘Tell me, Berg. Do you think I’m mad?’

Berg was puzzled. Was this some new strategy on Sbodin’s part?

‘Do you think I’m a little crazy?’

Berg shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

Sbodin stared at himself a little longer, rubbing his chin with his hand. And then he turned and looked slowly at Berg. When he spoke he did so unhurriedly.

‘If I’m not crazy, if I’m perfectly sane, then it must be you who’s mad.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Berg said, looking puzzled.

‘When I offered you a cigarette, did you ask me whether you were supposed to beg for it again?’

‘Yes. The last time——’

‘I don’t understand, Berg. What is that supposed to mean? Why do you think you have to beg?’

‘You made me beg the last time.’

Frowning, Sbodin stared at Berg for a time. He seemed to be thinking about something serious, as though he were about to make a momentous decision. And then all at once he relaxed, his body went limp and he smiled. He took out the cigarettes and extended the packet towards Berg. Cautiously Berg put out his hand and wondered what game Sbodin was playing now. It seemed to him that Sbodin’s games were without rules, that if there were rules then they were so flexible as not to be rules in any ordinary sense but could be broken or changed at a whim. He placed his fingers inside the packet and waited for something to happen—perhaps for Sbodin to snap the lid shut on his fingers and laugh. Berg slipped one of the cigarettes out and carried it to his mouth and even then expected the whole situation to change. But Sbodin came forward with a burning match and held it to the cigarette. Both men were silent for a long time, the only sound being that of Berg exhaling.

And then Sbodin said, ‘You didn’t have to beg for that, did you?’

Berg said nothing; he still vaguely expected something to happen. He was standing only inches away from the investigator. Looking straight at his face, he could see tiny globules of sweat rise from the open pores in his flesh, he could see himself reflected in the cold eyes, and he could hear, if he really listened, the faint sound of the man’s breathing. This sudden awareness of Sbodin made him conscious of a faint fear—like an animal catching a dangerous scent on the wind. The same man who had given him the cigarette, and who only minutes ago had humiliated him, would destroy him if he could. This realisation made him take a few steps backward, as if there were safety in distance, but somehow the movement away from Sbodin only increased his awareness of him. He was conscious in the silent room not only of Sbodin, not only of his own fear, but of seemingly extraneous things—like the incessant rattle of the rain at the window, the movement of the curtain, the faint swing of the electric light bulb above, the drab patterns of the wallpaper. Both Sbodin and the room seemed simultaneously to imprison him. They fell across him like heavy shadows, trapping him in a more frightening manner than when he had been locked in his bedroom. It was a different kind of prison. Deep in Sbodin’s eyes he thought he saw what it was, but when he really looked there was only a diminishing reflection of himself.

Sbodin said, ‘My colleague will have received my cable by now. Isn’t modern communication a miracle?’

Berg turned his face away. The sound of Sbodin’s voice had liberated him from the sensations he had been experiencing—but his sense of relief was abruptly severed when he thought of the cable. What did it mean? Why was he so concerned about Sbodin’s nameless colleagues in the city?

‘Isn’t it really a miracle, Berg?’

Five

A sound from the hall caused them both to turn round. Berg assumed it was Mrs Jacobitz returning and he didn’t relish the idea of meeting her. Beyond any doubt she would turn on him with a torrent of abuse. A man appeared in the open doorway; it was the one who had helped Monika into the car. He gazed briefly at Berg and in the look Berg thought he detected an expression of absolute pity.

The man stood for a time in silence, like someone mourning a passing and then, raising his eyes to Sbodin, removed his hat. His green raincoat, thoroughly sodden, seemed to cling to him. There was deference in his manner as if he were Sbodin’s subordinate.

‘What weather,’ he said. From the pocket of his coat he drew a large envelope and handed it to Sbodin.

‘How is the woman?’ Sbodin asked.

‘Shocked. You know how it is.’

Sbodin shrugged and stared at the envelope. Berg wondered what it contained and for one absurd moment imagined it to be his execution order. He envisaged himself moving, bustled by soldiers, through the daylight of his last morning to an appointed spot where the guns—aimed at his heart—would fire. It would be the last sound of his life; he would not even hear its echo.

‘Has she spoken?’ Sbodin asked.

‘She hasn’t said much,’ the man answered, gazing again at Berg—though this time with recrimination in his eyes. Or was it anger? Berg looked away.

‘When will she recover?’

The man shrugged. ‘I must get back to her.’

Sbodin nodded and tore open the envelope. As if waiting for an order, the man hovered in the centre of the room and left only when Sbodin casually raised his hand in a gesture of dismissal. Looking finally at Berg, the man went out, slamming the front door behind him. Automatically Berg remembered Mrs Jacobitz’s warning—that if the door were slammed then sooner or later the panes of glass would break.

Sbodin had taken from the envelope several sheets of paper and was reading through them quickly. Berg listened to the rustle of the paper and thought, Whatever is written there concerns me. He watched the investigator’s face for some sign but there was none. The same impassive expression, the same half-shut eyes, the same deceptively casual manner. When he was finished reading Sbodin folded the sheets over, weighed them a moment in his hand, and looked at Berg coldly. Berg sat down on the bed. It was softer than his own and it yielded at once to his weight—a fact that had a surprising effect upon him because all at once he was overcome by an immense fatigue, far greater than any he had experienced for a long time; it was as if sleep were running through his blood and freezing his brain, forcing his eyes shut and embalming his limbs. The inside of his mouth was dry and the palms of his hands itched. He thought of Monika and for some reason the irrelevant question of whether she was beautiful or not went through his mind. He could not decide. It suddenly seemed important to decide, but he couldn’t. Beautiful or not beautiful—how could he be sure? He tried to picture her face but something seemed to snatch the image away. Certainly he had looked at her a hundred times. He had stared at her across the kitchen table, seen her in his own room—but now, as though there were a short-circuit in the coils of his memory, he could not picture her at all. He tried to hear her voice but it came to him in a fragmented echo, like the unrecognisable reverberations of someone crying in a mausoleum. What did her breasts feel like? What did she whisper when she had spoken of her love to the gipsy? What did she say when they lay beside each other and dreamed? How did she make love? It seemed to him that he was staring at shadows through a keyhole, and that one of the shadows—if only he could make sense of it—was Monika’s. Why had she asked him to become her lover? She had asked that, hadn’t she? There was no mistake there, no possibility of error. She had plainly said: Become my lover, Berg. For no real reason he was overwhelmed by a sensation of sadness. He felt like a man in a picture gallery who experiences nostalgia from autumnal scenes—gold trees, dead leaves, shuffling footsteps through the dead and dying leaves.

‘Wake up,’ Sbodin said and his voice came to Berg through a long tunnel. ‘Come on, wake up.’

Berg opened his eyes. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep but must have drifted away briefly. He got up from the bed and rubbed his arms which had become cold.

‘You can’t sleep now,’ the investigator said. He thrust the sheets of paper into Berg’s hand. ‘It might interest you to read them.’

‘What is it?’

‘Take a look.’

Berg opened the sheets up. In block capitals were written the words:

‘THE TESTIMONY OF VERA JACOBITZ’

‘Well?’ Sbodin asked.

‘I feel too tired to read. Can’t it wait?’

‘Read it now. Go on. See what the widow has to say about you.’

Berg clutched the papers tightly: ‘What does it matter what she says about me? It doesn’t affect anything.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘How can it? She’s a harmless old woman, hardly in her right mind. Surely you wouldn’t ask me to believe anything in her statement?’

Sbodin merely smiled and the movement of his lips indicated to Berg that any further questions were futile. Besides, Berg was too weary to argue, too tired by the strain of a game that had gone on for too long. He opened the sheets again, sighed, and looked at the heading:

‘THE TESTIMONY OF VERA JACOBITZ’

He paused and looked at Sbodin, expecting a reprieve. But the investigator was gazing from the window. Berg closed his eyes. From afar, from deep within himself, he sensed the returning waves of fatigue.

‘Read it,’ Sbodin said. ‘It’s an interesting document.’

Berg sat down on the bed and stared at the first sheet:

‘I only take in lodgers you understand because my husband died of toadstool poisoning and I need a little extra money since the price of everything continues to go up and go up and my niece, Monika Jahn, isn’t too strong and can’t work for any great lengths of time.’

Berg paused and rubbed his eyes and wondered if the handwriting was the widow’s own or whether the statement had been taken down by someone else.

‘Now I took the man called Berg in without seeing him first because I knew he had a good steady job. He came from the capital—I don’t really know why but I suppose he wanted work. I expected him to be a good lodger and most of all have excellent manners. As it turned out he was a damned bad lodger and I’d like to see him hang for what he’s done to poor Monika. She’s only a child.’

Hang? Was that the statutory punishment for rape? Berg felt a moment of acute unease.

‘Well, to be perfectly honest, I knew there was something funny about him as soon as I clapped eyes on him. Let me explain what it was if I can find the proper words. That’s it. The first thing he said when I told him about my poor husband was that he thought it very odd a woodman should eat toadstools. And then he more or less says that he doesn’t think it could have been an accident. Everybody knew it was an accident but this stranger comes along and suggests that my husband committed suicide. He said that my husband deliberately killed himself.’

Berg tried to think. Had he said anything like that? He could no longer recall his first conversation with the widow, but he vaguely recollected her saying something about her husband’s death. Nothing more than that. Of course, he had been tired that day because he had just stepped off the train, but he was certain he hadn’t suggested anything like the thing the widow was claiming. In irritation he ruffled the sheets of paper and Sbodin turned to stare at him.

‘That was just a start. Well, it’s obvious now he had his eye on Monika all the time. I’m not as young as I used to be but I can tell when a man’s got the heat for a woman and that’s what he had for my poor niece. Maybe I should have put a stop to it all before it got really serious. But I didn’t. One day I remember telling him about Monika’s love for a gipsy in a circus and how I put a stop to it. He said I should have let her marry her gipsy, even though he turned out to be no good at all. You know what gipsies are like. Berg says she should have become the gipsy’s wife and I know now why he said that—it was because he got some sort of thrill out of thinking of Monika being married to that gipsy and lying night after night in his arms. It should have been obvious to me at the time what was going on in Berg’s head but we all make mistakes.’

Berg put the sheets down. He found it impossible to read any further. The more he read the more it seemed to him that he was being drawn ever deeper into some hideous, shapeless labyrinth—into the tortuous chambers of the widow’s mind. How could she write all this and be serious? He looked across the room at Sbodin but the investigator, shrugging his shoulders, said nothing.

‘That isn’t all. I even saw him giving me the eye one day and I knew what he was thinking. Isn’t it a scandal? An old woman like me and he wants to get me into bed.’

‘She’s insane,’ Berg said. ‘You can’t possibly take this nonsense seriously.’

‘Read on,’ Sbodin said. ‘It’s really revealing.’

Wearily Berg straightened out the papers.

‘But he really had his eye on Monika and that began to get a bit dangerous. One night I heard him go into her bedroom and I crept up the stairs and listened to what he was saying and I’ve never heard filth like it in my life. I’ll swear in all the courts in the country, he was offering her money to sleep with him, he was saying how much he desired her and why wouldn’t she let him come into her bed. When Monika refused—she’s a good child—when she refused him he started to get a bit ratty and shook her around and she only managed to get rid of him by threatening to call me.’

He dropped the papers. They slithered between his legs and fell across the floor. Going down on his knees to pick them up a strange wave of nausea struck him. It started in his stomach and rose to his head. Thick saliva formed on the surface of his tongue. What was the widow saying? Why was she lying like this? He had gone to Monika’s room he remembered as one recalls the events of a dream—he wouldn’t deny that he had visited the room and asked her to refrain from banging on the adjoining wall. But the conversation, as he recollected it, was totally unlike the widow’s report of it. Somehow, in her twisted head, she had picked everything up wrongly. Or perhaps she had heard it all correctly but was now attempting to protect her niece. Whatever the answer, her testimony was riddled with lies.

‘Have you finished?’ Sbodin asked.

On his knees, Berg retrieved the papers and tidied them.

‘Do I have to read any more of this?’

‘Finish it.’

‘I knew he really wanted her after that. I caught him kissing her one night but he thought I didn’t notice it, he thought an old woman won’t have good eyesight, but I see more than I let on. I kept an eye on him. He had disgusting manners for an educated man and he was always complaining and I did all I could to make him comfortable. But nothing satisfied him. Oh, he’s a strange one all right. You should hear him at night when he’s asleep. Moaning, crying out, sometimes he screams.’

Screams? Moans? He had no memory of anything like that. She was fabricating the entire thing; if he had made noises in his sleep then why hadn’t she complained at the time? Why hadn’t Monika mentioned it? He felt disgusted. Why should he be forced to read these lunatic ravings?

‘Then I decided to tackle him about his desire for Monika. I wanted to bring it all out into the open, clear the air, and ask him—politely—to find another room. No sooner had I opened my mouth than he raised his fist and punched me. He struck me two or three times on the side of the head and I dropped to the floor. That was the last straw. You can’t have a violent person like that in your home, can you? It was later that night, that very same night—oh, how I dread to think of it—he—he raped Monika, my poor niece. Now what sort of man is that? How do we know what he did in the city? How do we know he didn’t go around raping innocent women? What did he leave it for? I ask you. What sort of man is that? I swear that all I’ve said is the truth and I swear I’ll see him brought to justice. I’m prepared, as a citizen of this country, to testify in any court. Signed—Vera Jacobitz.’

Berg stopped reading. He was sweating profusely. The sensation of nausea had not left him and as he stared at the papers in his hand he thought for one moment that he was going to be sick over them. Sbodin was moving about the room, cautiously, avoiding the various trinkets that were placed along the shelves—little glass figures, two or three ornamental ashtrays, a set of china cups. Light caught these objects and flared and Berg experienced a blinding pain in his head. Sbodin now was standing beside him as though waiting for something extraordinary to happen.

‘You can’t expect me to take this seriously,’ Berg said. He threw the papers down on the bed and dismissed them. There was a long silence and the longer it grew the more Berg was conscious of Sbodin’s presence. Standing only a few feet away he seemed huge and overbearing.

‘Why don’t you take it seriously?’

Berg struck the papers with his fist. ‘Because what she says is a tissue of half-truths and downright lies. Nobody could take her seriously.’

Sbodin said, ‘What would you say if I told you that I believed every word of her testimony? What would you say if I told you that on the basis of her evidence I’m now thinking of charging you formally with the rape of Monika Jahn?’

Berg turned, half-expecting to see Sbodin smile.

But the investigator’s face was expressionless. He walked around the room and, stopping by the fireplace, said, ‘If you look at the widow’s testimony closely you’ll see that it fits into the pattern of behaviour that I’ve come to expect from you. She mentions violence—didn’t I just see you break the window in the kitchen without any justification? Wasn’t that an act of pointless violence? Similarly, what the widow says about your desire for Monika Jahn fits the facts very well. I have the piece of paper on which you’ve written about your frustration and your desire for the woman—don’t forget that. And now I have an eye-witness who heard you beg Monika to sleep with you. On top of all this, there are the widow’s remarks about your behaviour. Don’t these coincide very well with what Lazlow had to say? There’s a certain arrogance in a man who complains about everything all the time and who ignores another person’s attempts to make him comfortable. Didn’t Lazlow mention your arrogance and conceit? And I think that the widow is being very perceptive when she says that you derived some sort of sexual thrill from the thought of Monika Jahn sleeping with her gipsy lover—I can well imagine that you drew some sexual comfort from that thought. I don’t necessarily believe that you had designs on the widow herself—she’s an old woman and she might be thinking wishfully—but I wouldn’t simply discount it.’

Amazed by all this, Berg found it difficult to concentrate entirely on what Sbodin was saying. The man’s words seemed to run into one another in an endless sequence of verbal collisions—but he heard enough to understand that Sbodin was actually Considering the mad old woman’s testimony seriously. Opening his mouth to say something, Berg found that words would not come. He wanted to talk about the widow’s inconsistent and idiosyncratic behaviour, to say something about the outrageous way in which she treated him, to tell Sbodin about how he had put himself out to accommodate the widow’s lunacies—but the words would not form themselves on his tongue.

Sbodin said, ‘I think I have enough now to charge you formally, Berg. There’s the widow’s testimony, the character analysis offered by Lazlow, the note in your own handwriting, the various aspects of your behaviour that I’ve observed myself—and there’s the claim made by Monika Jahn herself. Of course it doesn’t follow from all this that you raped her, but the weight of circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. There’s a logical gap between all the threads of the evidence and the act of rape itself, but the law isn’t concerned with logic, Berg. It’s concerned with possibilities. And as this case now stands it’s more than likely that you raped the woman—a fact that any magistrate will support and sentence you on accordingly.’

A formal note had crept into Sbodin’s voice while he talked. At any moment Berg expected to see a pair of handcuffs appear and be clamped around his wrists. He shuddered—why was this happening to him? It was as if the universe itself had gone insane, as though the mechanism that controls events and regulates them under specific natural laws had broken down utterly. He would not have been surprised to see gravity defied and find himself floating above the earth. There was madness everywhere. In the investigator’s eyes there were mirrors of madness that reflected the acts of lunacy which were perpetrated everywhere. He felt an immense sadness: it was lonely and terrifying to be the only sane man amidst all this debris.

Sbodin said, ‘However, I’m not going to arrest you just yet. You must have a realistic chance of proving your innocence. So I’m going to wait until I’ve heard from my colleague in the city. Who can tell—he may discover that in the past your behaviour has been exemplary, that all your actions and deeds have been harmless. And if this is the case we’ll simply have to consider the whole affair again in the light of any new knowledge. So we’ll wait, Berg. We’ll wait until I have the report from the capital.’

In the jumble of his mind, Berg did not really realise what Sbodin was saying. Hearing the word capital it was as if every nerve in his shattered body had come to life. The report from the capital. The city seemed very far away now, and his mother—his mother seemed no more than the remnants of a fading dream. He tried to imagine the streets he had known and walked along, but in his mind these were strange thoroughfares he failed to recognise. The cafés and the shops—they were unfamiliar to him now. The thunderous sky, the vivid streaks ejected by the street lamps—they seemed to burn into the eyes of his memory. And his mother: he could not recall her face! Panic touched him. What did she look like? What had she looked like when he had last seen her? The report from the capital. What did it all mean? Searching through his memories he had the strong feeling that he was looking for something—for one tiny, lost thing—that would hold the key to this hideous affair. Bring me my tablets. Not those tablets, you fool. The yellow ones. The little shiny yellow ones. Fetch them quick—I feel the palpitations. He remembered the words, not the voice. He remembered the whine that night after night rose through the silent apartment and summoned him from sleep, but not the sound of it.

Sbodin said, ‘I’m afraid I shall have to lock you in your room, Berg. The situation demands it now. I can’t take the risk of letting you roam around freely.’

Wearily Berg rose and went upstairs, followed by Sbodin. It seemed to him that the upwards climb was never-ending and he wondered if he had the strength to reach the top. Against the darkened glass skylight rain fell with sounds that he felt upon his skin. On the landing he saw that the door to Monika’s room was open. He caught sight of the bed, the untidy sheets, the bits and pieces of her clothing that lay around and suddenly it all seemed familiar to him. He could feel the texture of the clothing and knew the contours of the rumpled sheets. But how did he know these things?

Sbodin said, ‘Does the scene of the crime still interest you? Shall we go inside and have a look?’

They entered Monika’s room and Berg, standing in the doorway, reluctant to move any further, looked around. It was dim and drab. In the thin light he could see very little. An ashtray overflowing beside the bed. Nylon stockings on the floor. The window open as if to rid the place of the scent of some obscenity. It was all agonisingly familiar to him.

‘This is where she was raped,’ Sbodin said. ‘Then she must have staggered downstairs and fallen in the hall, where the widow heard her screams.’

Berg nodded his head dumbly. The room opened its mouth and seemed to swallow him. He wanted to get out. He turned and went back to the landing. A moment later Sbodin came out.

‘Go inside,’ he said. ‘I’ll lock the door.’

Berg went into his own room. It smelled of cigarettes and sweat. Listening to the sound of the key turn in the lock, hearing the clatter of the investigator’s boots on the stairs, he became conscious of the depth of silence. He felt like a man who has encountered a silent and sullen landscape which will not respond to any gesture, any caress—which will not even throw back the echo of a sound. He lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Night was falling. It darkened the glass and accentuated the rain. The ceiling gave up its shadows and only the infrequent passage of a car, its lamps glaring through the rain, threw reflections. Darkness fell in the room with the noise of whispers. He was aware now of the empty house. He tried to remember when he had last seen his mother and the words that had passed between them. But he could not get the memory right—as if some delicate mechanism in his brain were malfunctioning. A door that would not open. A bolt drawn across, threading door to wall. He had a sudden urge to telephone her, to ask her to save him. There was a sinking, dropping sensation as though someone had taken him to a great height and then let him slip. Falling, he was aware of space.

He had last seen his mother on the evening before his departure. She had not known he was leaving. He was going to wait until she was asleep before he left. She had complained of a burning sensation in her stomach and began to catalogue a Whole list of possible causes—ulcer, appendix, gall stones, cancer of the intestines, a mere chill. No, it couldn’t have been a mere chill—such an ordinary complaint would not affect her. Her illnesses had to be exotic, they had to endanger her life. He listened to the sound of her voice and waited nervously until finally she was asleep. And then, dragging his suitcase, he had left the house and gone to the railway station.

But no—that memory was wrong. It had happened in a different way.

He had gone to her room and held her hand while she had tossed and turned with a pain that raked through her complex nervous system. He had thought: I have devoted my life to you. You have sucked me dry. And then, watching until she was finally asleep, he took his suitcase and went out into the darkness.

But that too wasn’t exactly right. The memory wouldn’t come to him. In his brain somewhere was a photograph that he couldn’t find—an image of the exact truth.

He had carried her to her room because she had fainted. That was correct. He had lifted her in his arms and was conscious that he was holding a woman pressed against his body. Forcing a little brandy into her mouth he was aware of her purple lips and her yellow teeth. Beyond that he could see the shape and shadow of her tongue. All this was correct. He had laid his hands on her breasts—for what reason, he wasn’t exactly certain. They had yielded like something incredibly soft. And then, certain that she was asleep, he crossed the city to the railway station.

But that wasn’t exactly correct either. In his mind, he had the sensation that he was confusing his mother with Monika Jahn. The memory of his departure was slipping away from him, fragment by fragment.

He rose from the bed and walked around the darkened room. He had the feeling that he was stumbling in the darkness of his life. He wondered what was going to happen to him now—when Sbodin came back with his colleague’s report from the capital. He stopped by the window. In the street below he observed several people grouped together. They seemed to be looking at the house. A few of them had their faces upturned and were staring at the window of his room. A little frightened, he stepped back, certain that he was invisible to them. What did they want? One of them he thought, was Mrs Jacobitz, but he couldn’t be certain. He felt suddenly like a criminal. It was the first time since Sbodin had come to his room that he felt he really had committed the act of rape. That was why they were standing down there now, staring at the house where the criminal was being held, at the place where the crime had taken place. He went back to his bed.

Although the darkness depressed him, he did not want to switch on the light. He lay down and closed his eyes. He tried to sleep but kept thinking about the cable, about the electric impulses that carried Sbodin’s words all the way to the capital and the nameless colleague there. Turning, and turning again, he fell eventually into the most restless sleep of his life.

Six

The voices seemed to burrow into his dream as if they were a part of it but it was only when he woke that he realised they were coming from the street outside. For some time he did not move; movement seemed futile, there was nothing he could do to disperse the echoes of his restless sleep. Besides, it took him several minutes to remember exactly where he was—since he had woken with the odd feeling that he was back in his mother’s apartment. Slowly he rose from the bed and went to the window. In the thin dry light of the early morning he saw a crowd of people packed tightly along the pavement, some of them spilling on the road, some in doorways opposite, some hanging from windows and gazing across. He blinked at them and all at once they fell into an unanimous silence as if ordered by some invisible leader. Even the vendors amongst them, the various pedlars with their trays of goods, no longer cried their wares but froze into silence and immobility like men suddenly stunned by an unnatural catastrophe. He realised that his own appearance had silenced them that probably they had been waiting for hours in the rain to catch a gimpse of him. Now, in awe, they were quiet. He saw the first shapes of sunlight come up on the roofs opposite, an eery yellow light that made little impression upon the thick grey stone but instead seemed to be absorbed by it. He didn’t move. He held his breath and scanned the crowd as if searching desperately for a familiar face, someone who could offer a crumb of comfort—yet he felt less like some caged freak or animal scrutinised by paying spectactors, and more like a man who was wakened inexplicably into a peculiar dream world, as though the waking experience were a mere extension of the nightmare. They had come to see the rapist. He felt vulnerabe all at once and his eyes moved up and down the silent faces looking for the man who was going to throw the first stone. Yet nothing happened. They seemed content to stand and feast their eyes on him and while he watched them in return he had the strange feeling that the crowd was a separate entity over and above the individuals who composed it, it was a huge sprawling animal that had come hungrily to pick what little flesh remained on his bones. It was a thousand-eyed monster that devoured everything around it. He stepped back from the window out of their view and went to the bed where he sat down, his arms hanging between his legs. Some seconds later the voices began again and the vendors started to offer their goods. Filtering up to him, it was like the noise of an unholy orchestra tuning its instruments.

He heard the door being unlocked and saw Sbodin enter. He looked tired and pale. He did not smile. Saying nothing to Berg, he crossed to the window, looked out, and sighed.

‘What do they want?’ Berg asked. ‘Can’t you make them go away?’

Sbodin turned and said, ‘It’s like a bit of sport to them. They’re curious to get a look at you. Who can blame them?’

‘Make them go away,’ Berg said. The sound of his own voice seemed to him something that he had dredged up, some foreign object, from fathomless depths.

‘I couldn’t do that. They’d only come back again. Anyway, why worry about them? They aren’t dangerous yet.’

‘How did they find out?’

Sbodin took a newspaper from his coat and threw it on the bed. Berg picked it up and there, on the front page, read about himself. The piece contained a succinct statement from Sbodin: ‘A man is being detained and investigations are taking their normal course.’

‘You see how famous you’ve become,’ Sbodin said.

‘Famous.’ Berg folded the newspaper. It was the first time he had ever read about himself in print.

‘Think of the large crowd that will attend your trial,’ the investigator said. ‘There hasn’t been anything like your case in this town for—oh, close on fifty years. We shall have to build an extension to the Magistrates’ Building to house everyone who wants to attend. Places will be sold on the black market. The trial will have enormous entertainment value.’

At the mention of the word trial Berg felt uneasy—like a man pushing a frail craft out on an uncharted ocean. ‘Do you mean that you’re going to charge me?’

‘That’s a mere detail,’ Sbodin said. ‘I’m thinking ahead now to the trial itself. I don’t like making a spectacle of the machinery of law, but even if I say so myself I put up a good show when I testify. I enjoy it, Berg. I’m not a sadistic man, as you’ll have gathered, but something about a big trial sets my blood on fire.’

‘But are you going to charge me?’ Berg asked again.

‘We’ll come to that.’

Berg did not pursue the point. If Sbodin was going to be elusive, it was useless to force him. Besides, it was obvious that Sbodin—now pacing the floor with an uncharacteristic display of excitement—it was obvious that he had something else on his mind.

‘I remember only two years ago, when I charged a man called Kuniczek with espionage, I gave a performance that is talked about in legal circles even today. The Presiding Magistrate, Masser, publically complimented me on my economic use of words, on my logical approach to tangled issues, and on my professional bearing throughout a long and exhausting trial. Naturally, I hope to excel myself at your own trial.’

Berg lay down. ‘I’m hungry.’

Moving back to the window, Sbodin said, ‘Later. First, I want to tell you that I’ve been to see Monika Jahn.’

Berg remained silent.

‘She’s recovering, of course. She’ll be fit in good time for her to testify at the trial, but I don’t want to rush things. However, I had a little talk to her and told her of your reaction to the charge.’

‘What did she say?’ Berg asked the question with little hope. The tone of his voice was flat and despairing.

‘She emphasised that her version of the affair is the true one, and that your denial is false.’ Sbodin took out his cigarettes. The smell of tobacco smoke made Berg feel sick. ‘She’s an attractive woman, Berg. Nobody’s going to blame you for raping her. I wish I could make you see that. I’d go as far as to say that certain elements in the crowd down there probably even envy you. They’re saying to themselves, He’s the fellow who had that beautiful creature—what a pity he’s been discovered.’

Beautiful creature? Berg formed an image of Monika: he supposed that in an odd way she was beautiful—in an unobtrusive way, shy and unconceited, probably unconscious of her own attractions. Even if he hadn’t raped her he found a certain pleasure in the thought that some of the crowd were envious of him. The man who raped the beautiful Monika Jahn.

‘But that’s beside the point,’ Sbodin said. ‘She reiterated what she had said before. You came to her room. You asked her to let you sleep with her and when she refused you pulled her nightdress off. You then chased her around the room.’

Sbodin took out his notebook and flicked the pages over. He read for a moment before going on to say, ‘She resisted you as much as she could but eventually fatigue overcame her and you proceeded to have forced sexual intercourse with her. Later, when you had returned to your room, and when her senses had come back, she was filled with shame and fear. Worried, terrified, she vaguely remembers leaving her room, crawling downstairs, and collapsing in the hall. Later, Mrs Jacobitz heard her sobbing and went out to her. At that point, I was called in.’

Berg was on the point of saying that this was a pack of lies when he realised the uselessness of protesting his innocence. At every other turn, at every angle in the complex maze, when he had contested or disputed any part of Sbodin’s so-called evidence, his protestations were either dismissed or completely ignored. What was the point then in denying the truth of Monika’s statement? Sbodin would simply override him—either by ignoring what he was trying to say or by diverting him into quite another point. He got up and went to the window. His appearance again silenced the crowd. Even crying children, gathered in their parents’ arms, stopped. He tried to imagine what his trial would be like. He envisaged some cavernous hall stuffed with these people, thousands of breathing, terrifying human beings, each peering at him from morbid curiosity. He imagined the Magistrate, some unsmiling wretch whose total experience of life had been gained from law books and whose only happiness was in computing the length of a sentence. And he could see Sbodin strutting across the court room spinning spirals of words while the spectators gasped at the intricacies of his logic. He realised then that he could not go through an experience like that—he could not suffer such a monstrous intrusion of his privacy, such a painful probe into his existence.

He looked down at the crowd again. ‘What is the punishment for rape?’

‘It depends,’ Sbodin said.

‘On what?’

‘On the mood of the Presiding Magistrate.’

A brilliant shaft of sunlight burst through the crowd, seeming to create the illusion of space. For a second he thought of it as some deadly cosmic ray that disintegrated human beings. But even his imagination would not allow any optimism.

‘Can’t you give me some idea of the statutory punishment for rape?’

‘It’s somewhat complicated,’ Sbodin said. ‘It’s complicated in the sense that different statutes appear to conflict. Therefore it depends on which statute the Presiding Magistrate is likely to prefer. There are some who incline to the 1948 Code, which stipulates the death sentence, provided the woman in the case has offered the rapist no encouragement. Others prefer the earlier 1933 Statute which stipulates a minimum of twenty years hard labour for a first offence, thirty years for a second offence, and death for offences after that. Finally——’

‘The death sentence?’ Berg turned from the window. Was that what the crowd wanted to see? The sight of his corpse strung up on a bleak scaffold, the enjoyment of seeing him carted away to some meagre burial plot? He could not entirely grasp the idea of his own death—it was like the concept of infinity. The more he thought about it the further it moved from his conceptual orbit. And he could only chase after it, crying for comprehension, chasing harder and harder—until, all at once, he discovered he could no longer will his limbs to move. That when he was moved it was other people who shifted him around, taking him down from a thick rope, wheeling him to a plot of land, dumping him in an open grave. It was all much more than he could take in. It was all totally insane. They were making a huge mistake and he would die an erroneous death. A huge mistake, a huge mistake. Like the wheels of a locomotive churning, the dreadful phrase echoed inside him.

Turning to Sbodin he asked, ‘Can you help me?’

The investigator smiled. ‘Are you afraid?’

‘Wouldn’t you be?’

‘A man has to take responsibility for his own actions, Berg. Don’t we all learn that as little children? Have you forgotten?’

Berg looked at the crowd. Blurred, the hundreds of faces fused into one amorphous horror.

He said, ‘You offered me a document yesterday. You said if I signed it the magistrate would be lenient. Let me sign it now. Give it to me and I’ll put my name to it.’

Sbodin leaned against the wall. ‘I’m sorry, Berg. I offered you the document on two or three occasions. You refused. At the time, I didn’t have a strong case. Now I think my case is a good one. The-opportunity to sign has passed.’

‘Passed?’ Berg looked at the investigator uncomprehendingly. He felt suddenly weak. He felt as if he were disintegrating, as though the molecules of which he was composed were cracking apart. Sunlight flared against the window. The crowd in the street, like some tragic chorus, stared upwards.

‘You have to admit that there isn’t any way out for you.’

‘No,’ Berg said. ‘How could I admit that? How can you justify your own actions in condemning an innocent man?’

Sbodin stared a moment in disbelief. And then, raising his head a little, laughed noisily. It was a strange, emasculated laugh, as though the man were wary of giving the impression that he had a sense of humour. When it had stopped, he said, ‘Do I have to justify my actions? Why do you think that? I simply interpret the evidence and the evidence against you is very strong. I present the evidence to the court, with my recommendation, and that is all. In my eyes you are a guilty man. The facts point in your direction. Need I say more?’

Berg searched the investigator’s face for a moment, as though he were looking there for some glimpse of humanity. What had gone wrong in the world? Why were so many people telling so many lies? Why did they all want his destruction? Endlessly, these questions circled his mind. He battered his fists against them, he attacked them, but still there were no answers.

Sbodin said, ‘I told you yesterday, Berg, that your arrest is imminent. I could arrest you now that I have reaffirmation of Monika Jahn’s testimony. She has not changed her mind. So far as she is concerned, there isn’t a doubt in the world. All the evidence I have would be enough for any court. But I’m a thorough man and one of my qualities is patience. Consequently, I’m prepared to wait for the report from the capital. Whatever it is that I learn from my colleague there, it will have to be of strking importance to swing the case in your direction. And at this moment, I can’t think of a single thing that would help you.’

Berg walked away from the window. ‘I’m hungry.’

Sbodin said, ‘No doubt Mrs Jacobitz has prepared us some breakfast.’

‘Mrs Jacobitz?’

‘She returned with me this morning. Reluctantly, she agreed to make breakfast for both of us. Even the guilty have to eat—that’s what I told her. You look a little pale, Berg. Does the thought of seeing the widow again worry you?’

Berg didn’t answer the question.

Seven

He saw her first from the top of the stairs. Hands on her hips she was staring up at him her head cocked to the one side, her eyes—even from that distance—cold and glassy. For a moment he hesitated and then there was a gentle pressure from Sbodin against his shoulder and he continued down the stairs. The widow turned and went through the door that led to the kitchen. When Berg entered she was at the sink, her back to him. Staring at her shape he wondered why he was suddenly so afraid of speaking to her and realised that he was reacting and behaving as though he were truly guilty of the crime. He was the criminal, the man who had gone to Monika’s bedroom and raped her—all of which was preposterous. Only a few moments ago hadn’t he even offered to sign the incriminating document?

Clearing his throat he said in a dry voice, ‘I’ll be glad when this misunderstanding is settled.’

Without turning, the widow muttered something that he could not catch. Her voice was partially lost in the clatter of wet dishes, the rattle of running water. Steam, belching from the sink, enshrouded her. Sbodin sat at the table and scraped the prongs of his fork along the wooden surface. These various noises seemed inordinately loud to Berg who moved towards the window and saw, to his acute horror, that a large part of the crowd had invaded the back garden. They stood outside, some hidden by the tangled shrubbery, some reclining on branches of the trees, others standing only a few feet away from the window itself. He was about to draw the curtains when he realised that there were none. He sat at the table and looked imploringly at Sbodin who was deeply engrossed in the movements of his fork.

The widow said, ‘Breakfast will be ready in a moment.’

Berg said, ‘They’re in the garden as well. I can’t stand it. Can’t you do something?’

Sbodin shrugged: ‘What can I do?’

The widow laid plates on the table and glanced quickly at Berg. He saw that her face was pale and thin; the ordeal had left its scars. She seemed about to say something to him and then changed her mind, turning to go to the stove. When she came back a moment later she was carrying a large frying pan. Seeing this, Berg had the momentary illusion that nothing had changed, that everything was as it had been a few days ago, that at any moment Monika would come in and sit down beside him. The widow silently began to dish out some slices of fried pork. Sbodin cut a piece and swallowed it quickly.

‘It’s delicious,’ he said.

The widow sat down but ate nothing herself. Her head supported by her hands she looked at Berg as though examining him in great detail. Sometimes she turned her face to the left, sometimes to the right, like someone trying to get a painting into its proper perspective. He felt nervous beneath her scrutiny. He stared at the slices of pork but his appetite was gone. He watched Sbodin eat hungrily and was revolted by the sight.

‘Your prisoner isn’t hungry,’ Mrs Jacobitz said.

His mouth stuffed with food, Sbodin said, ‘He’s a worried man. I wouldn’t like to be in his position.’

‘He never enjoyed my cooking, you know. It isn’t grand enough for him.’ The widow began to crack the joints in her hands. ‘He’s used to better things, you know. He’s used to—what do you call it?—refinement. That’s why he was never really happy here.’

The widow stopped speaking. She made a small choking noise and looked out into the garden. If she saw the crowd gathered there she said nothing about it. Suddenly she began to weep; huge tears slid down her cheeks and she produced a ragged handkerchief that she used to smother her face in. Her thick shoulders vibrated and her breasts heaved. Berg thought she looked like a whale that is suddenly dragged out of the sea to expire on a dry beach.

Sbodin said, ‘There, there. It won’t do any good to cry.’

Encouraged by this, the widow wept louder. She banged her fists on the table and from beneath her closed eyes large, and still larger tears fell. When finally she stopped she twisted her handkerchief in her fingers and said, ‘I can’t bear to think what this man has done to my niece. I keep asking myself: Why did it have to happen to us? Why? Did I do something wrong somewhere? Is God punishing me for some sin? Is that what it is?’

Sbodin said, ‘There’s no question of God punishing you, Mrs Jacobitz.’

‘I know it’s old-fashioned to believe in God, but I’m an old-fashioned person. I put my trust in Him. I thought He’d look after me. I say my prayers. Now He’s let us down—oh, what’s to become of us?’

Sbodin patted the back of her hand and Berg saw her bulbous fingers coil around Sbodin’s wrist. There was something horrific in this conjunction of flesh and tentacles.

‘Why was this man sent here? I keep asking myself that. If he hadn’t come my niece wouldn’t have been so cruelly—I can’t even bring myself to say the word. Why did this man cause us all so much pain?’

Berg wanted to say something, but all the words at his disposal had already been used and ignored. He remained silent: he was as silent as the crowd in the garden. He stared at the widow. She looked at him with a cold fury and then, opening her mouth, dropping her head back and pushing it suddenly forward, spat at him. The trickle of saliva ran down his forehead and into his eyes.

Sbodin said, ‘I don’t blame you for that, Mrs Jacobitz. I know how despicable you find this man.’

The widow sighed. She got up from the table. Those in the garden close enough to get a view of what she had done made low noises of approval. Someone clapped his hands and there was a brief outbreak of applause. Berg rubbed his eyes: it wasn’t the humiliation of what had happened that angered him, it was the realisation that no matter how badly he was treated the crowd outside would approve. He felt totally isolated.

The widow stopped before the broken window. ‘Who did this?’

Sbodin said, ‘Berg. He was trying to escape. I stopped him in time.’

‘Trying to escape, eh?’ The widow approached Berg and looked as if she were going to spit on him again, but she didn’t. She said, ‘You bastard. You bastard. If you hang, I hope they let me do the job myself.’ Then, as though horrified by the depths of hatred she had discovered in herself, she went weeping from the room. Berg heard the door of her bedroom slam shut.

‘An unfortunate incident,’ Sbodin said.

Berg sat with his head bowed. ‘She loathes me,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t surprise you, does it?’

Berg said nothing. He looked upwards through the window. In the branches of the trees several people were precariously seated. They were staring into the room; one, he noticed, had a pair of binoculars.

‘I want to go back to my room,’ he said.

Eight

He lay on his bed for hours, sleeping fitfully sometimes, at other times half-conscious of the noise of voices from the street. There were other sounds too: the slamming of doors within the house, as if Mrs Jacobitz were working off her rage by trying to fill the structure of the house with innumerable echoes. He woke once and realised that his limbs were stiff, either from cold or fatigue—he wasn’t certain which. He had not set foot outside the house for almost two days. The air he had breathed in that time seemed full of staleness and dust; his room had grown an alarming collection of cobwebs he had never noticed before. Netted in all the four corners they were vacant of their tenants but spotted by the shards of trapped flies. They threw flimsy shadows and once, in a brief dream, he observed the motionless reflection of a gigantic spider—like a vision on the surface of a disturbed pool, or like the fading after-image of a blinding flash of light. In his state of intermittent consciousness and restless sleep he suffered headaches and nausea, much of which was inspired by the thought of death. He had visions of mounting the steps to the gallows. He had other images of being dragged across a field of rubble to a slender stake, of being tethered to it by a length of sharp rope, of a multitude of rifles raised against him. Echoes of gunshot filled his ears and his senses seemed to spin beneath the weight of his suffering.

He woke once and wondered what had become of Sbodin. Was the man downstairs now, concocting new lies in association with the crazy widow? Was he at his office—wherever that might be—awaiting the report from the capital? Was he with Lazlow, taking a statement? Preparing the papers for a formal arrest? Speaking again with Monika? Talking about the charges with the man who was to be Presiding Magistrate? It seemed to Berg that all of these things were associated in some inexorable way, that he was at the centre of some monstrous cancer of falsehood and that further lies—each containing the seed of his destruction—were being grafted on to the original growth. Once, in a dream, he was sinking through some sea of viscous fluid, struggling upwards to the sunlight but eventually accepting his fate and going under, watching the sun grow weaker and weaker as he dropped beneath the ocean. In another dream he was watching his mother’s funeral. He approached the coffin, swore, and spat on his dead mother’s face. He woke in a sweat, shivering and frozen.

At other times he thought of Monika and wished that he could see her. He was sure that if he could speak to her he would be able to clear everything up in a matter of minutes. He could make her see that her claim was without justification. That in her state of shock she had accused him. That he wasn’t responsible. That the real criminal was probably miles away. But even in this certainty he had doubts. Perhaps she would refuse to retract, insist that he was the rapist, ignore his pleas entirely. Perhaps she would refuse to see him at all—or if she did see him, perhaps she would ignore everything he said. It is a case of mistaken identity, he would say. I do not blame you in any way, I understand how shocked you must have been, but I ask you now to withdraw. Yes, she might say. I see how wrong I was. It was dark, you see. I did not get a proper look at the rapist’s face. Now I know that it wasn’t you, Berg. It was someone else.

She might say: she might not say. He wanted to talk to her, but didn’t even know where she was being kept. It was possible that she was in a hospital somewhere—but where? It was possible that she was being detained in a different place altogether—but where? His knowledge of the area was scanty. Monika could be anywhere. Even if he were free to look, he might never succeed in discovering where she was being kept.

In another dream he had the feeling that he was being pursued by Lazlow. Behind Lazlow, behind his glinting glasses and the sparkling sweat on his bald head, were the shadows of his superiors—those very men who had refused him access to the knowledge he had so badly wanted. Now even that seemed purposeless. He could not imagine why he had asked the questions he had—perhaps he had been overzealous, unwilling and quite unable to accept that there were certain facts to which he could not gain access. Was he such an impatient man? He thought of Lazlow and Miss Selz sprawled on top of his desk. How could he be sure that he had ever seen such a thing?

Confused, he wandered around the darkness of his room. He stumbled into tables and chairs and found his way to the window. The crowd had almost entirely dispersed. Only a few scattered figures still remained, their shadows limp in the light of the streetlamp. He watched for a moment and then turned away. But it did not really matter where he turned—in the sense that every move he made could only lead to the ultimate humiliation of a trial. He tried to imagine the questions of the Presiding Magistrate:

‘When you lived in the capital, Berg, how many times did you have sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex?

‘How many times with members of your own sex?

‘Are you impotent?

‘Since you deny that you are, how do you explain this medical report I have in front of me?

‘Did you ever sleep with your mother, Berg?’

Berg sat at the table in the darkened room. He imagined some clumsy doctor fumbling with his genitals, looking for evidence that would be given in the public court. The shocked gasp. The smirking whispers. The entrails of his private life dumped on some table in public view, probed and prodded by insensitive men, talked about objectively, sneered at privately.

‘Are you in the habit of looking through keyholes?

‘Is it true that you visited Monika Jahn in her bedroom?

‘Is it also true that you physically attacked Mrs Jacobitz, a helpless widow?

‘Would you deny that you left the capital to seek a new life because you are an abject failure? Would you deny that you left university because of your inability to complete your course of studies? That you were—on the evidence of your contemporaries—an impossible man to befriend?’

He saw a thin sliver of light beneath the door of his room and heard slow footsteps on the stairs that he recognised as being those of Mrs Jacobitz. The slop-slop of her slippers as they collided with her heels. He waited, holding his breath. There was a light tap on his door.

‘Yes?’

‘Berg? Mr Sbodin requested that I should bring you some coffee.’

‘Where is Sbodin?’

‘He went out for a moment. He will come back shortly.’

There was a pause. Even from within the room, he could hear the widow wheezing from the effort of climbing the stairs.

‘I’m going to unlock your door,’ she said. ‘I must warn you not to try anything, because Sbodin has men posted all over the place.’

‘Try anything?’ he asked and listened to the key being turned. He saw the widow’s silhouette in the doorway. ‘I wouldn’t try anything.’

‘Why are you sitting in darkness?’ she asked. He saw her hand go to the lightswitch and then the room was flooded—painfully—with light. She came across the room and set the tray she was carrying on the table. It held a cup of coffee and a dry bread roll.

‘I’ve been asleep.’

‘I don’t know why Sbodin should bother his head about seeing that you have some refreshment. If it was up to me, I’d let you rot.’

He reached for the coffee and drank some. It scalded his tongue and throat. ‘You really believe I’m guilty, don’t you?’

She laughed. ‘Really—that sort of question doesn’t make much sense.’

‘I read your testimony.’

‘Oh did you?’

Berg put the coffee down. He looked at the dry roll. ‘It’s a pack of lies, isn’t it? Why did you tell those lies about me? You know I didn’t rape your niece—why do you want to see me punished for something I didn’t do?’

‘Didn’t do? Didn’t do?’ The widow laughed again; this time it seemed to Berg more of a vindictive cackle. He felt a surge of anger. ‘Do you know what the penalty is for a crime of this kind?’ She drew a finger across her neck and made a gasping noise.

‘Why do you hate me? You hated me from the very first moment I came here, didn’t you? You want to see me destroyed——’

‘It can’t come soon enough,’ the widow said. She sat back, swinging her legs, smiling at him. Her twisted hands lay in her lap. Sometimes one would flutter up to her necklace and tug on the beads.

Berg got up from the table. He stood in front of the widow and looked at her. For a moment Mrs Jacobitz seemed ill at ease because she said, ‘Sbodin will be back at any moment.’

Berg walked to the centre of the room. He had noticed that the widow smelled, that a strong aroma rose up from her. It was like the pungent smell of very dry concrete washed at last by rain, the smell of sodden dust. He remembered the smell in Monika’s room. It returned to him, seeming now to trap him, to ensnare his senses. And before that there was the same smell in his mother’s room—distinctly feminine. Why should that memory make him feel anxious? He looked beyond the widow to the open door and the thin light on the landing. Above, he saw the glass skylight in the roof. These openings were calling to him. It would take—what? two, three minutes to climb through the skylight and get down the roof. He thought of his trial and the shame. He thought of the cable from Sbodin’s colleague that even now might be travelling along the telegraph wires that connected this backward town to the capital.

‘Where has Sbodin gone?’ he asked.

‘To his office,’ the widow said.

‘Why?’

‘In connection with you, he said. He didn’t say what.’

‘In connection with me, eh?’ Berg looked around the room. The widow followed his eyes, trying to understand what he was looking for. She seemed all at once alarmed—as though she had realised that by being alone in the rapist’s room she was in terrible danger. She rose from her chair very slowly, nervously, a thin film of sweat around her lips. Berg looked at the protruding veins on her fat legs. She seemed to have extra layers of flesh that swaddled her bones—yet, in a strange way, she seemed brittle. It was as if she might snap clean at a single touch. He looked again at the electric bulb on the landing and the skylight above it. He could get out that way. He could go down the roof and drop into the garden at the back of the house. He could travel through the darkness and be safe until daylight, by which time, with luck, he might be miles away. Besides, he knew that the border wasn’t far from here and that if he discovered an unguarded spot—which was possible—he would get out of the country. He paused a moment. What was the alternative? He knew what it was: it was written on the widow’s face, it underlay the sound of her voice and words that she spoke.

He moved towards the door. It suddenly occurred to him that the whole thing was a trap laid by Sbodin. The widow had been left on her own intentionally in the hope that he would take advantage of the opportunity to escape. But how could he know for certain that there was such a trap unless he took the chance? In the open doorway he hesitated a moment and considered the possibilities. Either Sbodin meant him to attempt an escape, which would be clear proof of his guilt—since an innocent man does not run away—or else he had simply made an error of judgement in leaving the widow alone in the house. But which? Which?

The widow caught his arm. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Let go,’ he said. He shrugged her aside. She fell back against the wall.

‘Sbodin will be back any second now,’ she said, staggering to her feet. She reached for him and put her arms around his waist and again he knocked her away, this time causing her to fall through the open door into her niece’s room. She lay for a time and sobbed quietly, saying over and over again that Sbodin will be back, Sbodin will be back. Reaching up, Berg forced the skylight open. Cold night air touched his face. By gripping the sides of the opening, he pulled himself up. And then he realised that the widow was below him again, holding on to his foot.

‘You can’t escape,’ she said. ‘You can’t get away from it.’

Stuck in the skylight, he had a growing sensation of desperation. He saw the roof slope away beneath him and beyond that he had an impression of the lights of the town, flickering and leaping in front of his eyes as he strained to get free.

‘Berg, you can’t get away,’ the widow said. ‘You might as well come down.’

She was holding him tightly, gasping and wheezing to control his movements. He swung his foot round and struck her on the side of the face. She gave a short cry and he looked down briefly. He saw her tumble down the stairs, her skirt flying, her arms raised in the air for the support that would not come. Her head struck the side of the wall and she cried out again and then, toppling over, she dropped from the bottom step into the hall. She lay there, staring brokenly up at him and when he could no longer look at her he pushed himself through the skylight and on to the roof.

His shoes crunched on the slates and he lost his balance. He was falling through the air, conscious of the sharpness of the night around him. A multitude of impressions went through his mind—but for some reason he was unafraid, it did not matter as he fell that sooner or later he must strike something hard. He hit the shrubbery face first and broke his way through it to the earth beneath. Breathing heavily, he lay there for a time. Lights danced in front of his eyes and blood pulsed through his body until it seemed he was nothing more than an unconnected mass of such pulses. When he rose some minutes later he struggled to the back of the garden, pushed open the door and led from the wall and into the street beyond, and began to walk quickly away. There was a pain in his leg but it was nothing intolerable. He dragged it slightly. He arrived at a darkened side street and stopped. He vaguely heard whispers in a doorway and through the darkness made out the shapes of two lovers. He went quickly past them and then realised, when he came to the end of the street and saw stretching ahead of him the hideous alternatives of a crossroads, that he was totally lost.

Nine

Various people passed back and forth in front of him. A military truck, its headlamps slicing darkness, took the eastern fork of the crossroads. He could make out the humped shapes of soldiers, their grim faces appearing intermittently as street light fell into the back of the truck. And there was silence. He thought of the widow and dismissed the whole thing: she had fallen down the stairs, perhaps she was dead. At a time like this considerations of this kind were irrelevant. Another dead widow in the world, another callous fact. He moved to the centre of the crossroads and paused. The people he had noticed at first were nowhere in sight—so far as he could see the place was deserted. Even the buildings around him were in darkness. He saw the red light of the truck disappear along the black stretch of road and, drawn by this, began to walk after it. He wasn’t altogether certain but it seemed likely that he was walking east. He couldn’t even remember if the border lay in that direction but he knew the sheer necessity for action. If the widow was dead … He saw a car come up in front of him and involuntarily he stepped back into the bushes at the side of the road. It was easy, he thought, to acquire the habits of the fugitive. The car came up and then went past in a frightening streak of light and when the noise of the engine had faded there was a silence as desolate as anything he had ever experienced. It was so dark that he did not know what lay to the left and right of him. Possibly there were fields—but in the absence of light it was impossible to be certain. Once, as he walked, he thought he saw a light shimmering in the distance but as he came nearer to it it faded and died. Possibly some sort of optical illusion. Perhaps someone moving out there with a lantern. Eventually, overcome with tiredness and nauseated by the increasing amount of pain in his leg, he sat down. He fell asleep—he didn’t know for how long—but when he woke it was still dark. Forcing himself to get up, he continued walking. He couldn’t afford to sleep: before very long they would come after him, if they were not after him already. Every step he took now seemed to send a bolt of pain through him—and the extraordinary thing about it was that the pain seemed at first to be in the left leg, next in the right.

After some minutes he lay down again. The grass was cold. It seemed to suck at his face and hands, and invisible things that floated through the dark touched his skin. He did not lie for long this time because the damp grass was beginning to soak through his trousers and he could not afford to run the risk of catching a chill. As he walked along he had the odd feeling that he was just another pedestrian who has been surprised by darkness and has lost his way. The sense of danger, previously so acute, seemed to have dissipated itself. For a minute or so he relaxed, breathing the icy night air deep into his lungs. A scuttling sound from the hedge made him freeze. Some small bird, some animal, burrowing through the leaves. There were other faint noises around him too, that he noticed for the first time: the distant call of birds, the cry of a cat, the shriek of a night-owl. He listened carefully like someone who has suddenly discovered another dimension of sound. The road took a turn after that and through a clump of trees he observed a collection of pale lights. How far they were from him he could not guess, but he recognised the need for caution. He went towards the lights and as he did so several distinct features appeared.

First he realised that there were more lights than he had at first imagined; what had seemed to be half-a-dozen sources of light were in fact about fifty or sixty. Secondly, he noticed that some sort of activity was going on; he could make out the vague shapes of people moving back and forth in front of the lights. And third, he observed that the lights themselves seemed to hang suspended in mid-air without physical support. He stopped for a moment, feeling a faint sense of danger again. Where there were people it was bound to be dangerous—but what could he do? The road led straight past the lights and unless he turned back—which he could not possibly do—he would have to go straight past them himself. Besides, there was no reason why—if he were seen—anyone should suspect him of a crime. He was simply a man taking an evening stroll, he was nothing more than that. He slowed his pace and when he was within a hundred yards of the place he realised that the lights were supported by thin wires and that the men beneath them were in the act of constructing something. They moved back and forward with wheelbarrows. Several empty trucks were parked beyond the lights and a couple of men leaning against them were smoking cigarettes. He paused, breathing slowly. He felt within himself the sense of urgency that seemed to have deserted him: there was nothing else for it, he would have to keep moving quickly if he was to put a good distance between himself and the town before dawn.

Keeping close to the hedgerow, he continued along the road. Twenty yards from the place he saw a half-constructed building and there, just in front of him, was a notice with the words: To the Site Agent’s Office. For a second his heart seemed to stop beating. He held his breath and a hundred thoughts ran through his brain. Here was the very place that only a few days ago he had desperately wanted to know about. Now, when another sort of desperation had seized him, he would have to ignore the opportunity of finding out some of the facts that had been kept from him. He looked past the notice-board where a thin dirt-track ran up to a prefabricated wooden hut. A lamp was burning in the window and the silhouette of a man could be seen bending over some papers. The Site Agent, he thought. The Site Agent!

He waited a moment, taking the opportunity to observe the place closely. The half-constructed building, he saw now, was oval in shape. Men moved inside it with wheelbarrows and seconds later came out again. He could not see properly whether the building had a flat roof, or whether its roof had not yet been constructed. But staring at it he could attach no definite function to it—it was oval, and seemed to have been built in layers, the bottom layer being perhaps about six feet high, the top about two, and the layers in between being of proportionately diminishing dimensions. He looked beyond the lights to the trucks and realised that they were military vehicles—exactly like the one he had seen take the eastern fork at the crossroads. As he stared, he had the impression that all the activity going on before him was somehow ghostly—an optical effect imparted by the peculiar yellow flare of the light-bulbs. He turned again to look at the prefabricated hut which was now in darkness. A door swung open and a man stepped out, tugging at the tops of his trousers. Was this the Site Agent? Berg wondered. Was this the man he had accidentally telephoned that day that now seemed like centuries ago?

The man came down a flight of wooden steps, his shoes ringing against them. He walked across and stopped just in front of the building. Crossing his arms, he watched the men with their wheelbarrows and then he turned round—as if by some odd intuition—and looked in Berg’s direction. Berg moved into the hedge, holding his breath, feeling a growing sense of panic. What if he had been seen? What would happen then?

But the man had turned round again and was looking at the workers. Berg took the opportunity to move and, crouching very low, made his way to the other side of the road. There he began to walk: in a matter of seconds he would be out of range of the lights, he would be back in the realms of darkness. He moved forward. Voices from the Site carried across to him even if he could not hear what was being said. He had to keep moving: time was precious. He was exposed by the lights but if no one looked he would be safe: in seconds now, in seconds, he would pass beyond the glare and be back in the safety of the dark.

The road took a sudden and totally unexpected turn.

It was then that he encountered the wall. He groped along it, fumbling for some way past it. It was made of brick, built to a height of about twelve feet. It extended from one side of the road to the other, allowing no means of passing it.

Leaning against it breathlessly, Berg realised then that the eastern fork from the crossroads was a dead-end street. He sat down and a feeling of sheer despair came over him. The road led only to the Site and nowhere else. The road ended at this solid wall.

It meant that he would either have to strike across the fields—if there were fields beyond the hedgerows—or go back the way he had come. If he returned to the crossroads it would be light by the time he reached them and someone was certain to recognise him. If he went beyond the hedgerows he was almost certain to lose his sense of direction without a road to guide him. He could not think: it was as if there were not only a wall at his back but another in his mind.

What was he supposed to do now? As he waited time went past; as he remained indecisive, Sbodin was probably pursuing him now.

But what was he supposed to do?

He rose to his feet and went to the hedgerow. He looked over the top, straining his eyes to see through the impenetrable blackness of the night. There was nothing. He might just as well have been staring at an alien landscape. No landmarks, no lights, no pathways—nothing but a darkness that seemed to swirl over everything like a fog. Out there he was certain to be lost and if he were lost then in time he might even go back on his tracks and return inadvertently to the town.

He walked back along the road a little way and stopped just before the lights came in view. He could see, very vaguely, the glare of them burn up the darkness.

Did he return to the crossroads? Or did he go over the hedge and off the road?

All at once a light flashed across his face. Bewildered, he swung round. Beside him stood a man with a flashlight. He could not see the man’s face but in the reflection of the torch he saw—with a lost, sinking feeling—the metal buttons on the man’s tunic.

‘What are you doing here? Don’t you know this is a forbidden road?’

Blinded, Berg opened his mouth: ‘But——’

The flashlight moved forward; a hand fell across his shoulder. He was forcibly turned round and made to walk ahead. He was made to walk as far as the Site where the workers, seeing this stranger, dropped their wheelbarrows and stared.

Ten

The man with the flashlight led him to the prefabricated wooden hut he had seen earlier and rapped twice on the door. A moment later it swung open and in the flood of bright white light a figure appeared. It was the man Berg had thought was the Site Agent. For a long time nothing was said until the figure in the hut, tugging at his trousers, asked.

‘What the hell is this?’

The man with the torch said, ‘Unauthorised person caught on the road, sir.’

‘Who is he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who are you?’

Berg was pushed forward roughly, still unable to see the other man’s face because of the strong light shining from behind.

‘My name is Berg.’

‘Berg? Never heard of you. Lock him away somewhere.’

‘Look, I didn’t know I was trespassing. If you’ll allow me to proceed on my way——’

‘Lock him up. Call the police. I don’t care——’ The man caught at his trousers again as though from some pathological fear that they might fall down. Turning, he slammed the door hard.

Berg was led across some sort of yard, through a patch of heavy, sucking mud into which he found himself sinking. At the other side of the yard he was pushed into a tiny wooden hut, little more than a closet—an enclosure that had no window and was poorly ventilated. The door was shut and locked and he stood there in complete darkness, dizzy and weak. There was a strong stench of excrement—whether human or animal, or some mixture of the two, he couldn’t be sure. From outside there were a great many voices, some coming from a point just beyond the door, others from a greater distance. Mostly they were angry, although there was the occasional interjection of broken laughter. After a time the voices drifted away and there were other sounds coming—or so he supposed—from the men as they resumed their work. He leaned against the wall and thought that if only he had taken another fork at the crossroads this would never have happened. He could have been far away by this time, perhaps even over the border and beyond Sbodin’s reach. Instead he was imprisoned in this foul hut with the abominable smell.

His legs were sore and numb. He wanted badly to sit down but in the darkness there was no way of knowing what lay on the floor; and the stench indicated that the hut was probably used as a latrine. He began to rub his arms, shivering from the cold. He thought about the crossroads again—what had possessed him to take this turning? Mentally he transported himself back to the moment in time when he had first approached the crossroads: of course, of course, he should have gone west, there was no doubt about that now. He had simply made the wrong choice—after all, how was he supposed to know that he had been walking on a forbidden highway or that there was a wall built across it? He crouched down, trying to bring some relief to his legs but such a crouching position merely seemed to increase the strain on them.

He rested his head against the wall. A spider or some kind of insect scuttled across his face and he knocked it down with his hand. He shifted his feet and something squelched beneath his shoe. A terrible smell rose up to him: it seemed to him a mixture of decay and waste, of something that has lain trapped, disintegrating, for years. Closing his eyes, he tried to sleep. But if he slept he was almost certain to fall down, and if he fell down he would come in contact with whatever lay on the floor. A sensation of great nausea came over him. It might have been better if he had been able to see through a window, if he had been able to catch a glimpse of the night sky, but stuck in this stifling blackness he felt like a muzzled animal. Hadn’t he read once about pit ponies? About how they became blind after years of work in dark mines? And wasn’t it true that when they were brought to the surface the glare of the sun drove them crazy?

He clenched his hands together. The fingers were cold, like chips of ice. He rubbed them for warmth and thought how strange it was that he should end up in this place. All this time he had been anxious to know about the Site—now all he would ever remember was the dreadful smell and the time of his imprisonment.

Sounds came from outside again. Voices that he could hear across the noises of construction. They approached the hut, circled it, and then faded away. After that there was a total silence. Even the noises of work ceased and the night was incredibly quiet, as silent as the inside of the hut itself. What were they doing now? He imagined they had stopped, gone home or to their lodgings—after all, it was very late.

Unable to stand the strain of crouching, he went down on his knees. Then, quite suddenly, he started to tremble. The movement began in the muscles at the back of his legs and spread across his whole body. He clenched his teeth and made an effort of will to stop it—but he couldn’t. What was causing it? Some delayed reaction to the sight of the widow lying at the bottom of the stairs? The knowledge that she might be dead? But she wasn’t dead: somehow he was certain of that. She may have broken a bone or two, she may have been concussed, but she certainly wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead, because if she were then technically he was her killer. And he knew within himself that he was quite incapable of killing anyone. Therefore the widow was alive. He wanted all at once to tell this to someone, he wanted to say that the widow was alive and that after treatment she would be as well as ever before. But only the pressing darkness groped back at him, swirled heavily around him.

He closed his eyes again. It made no difference to the depth of the darkness. When the fit of trembling passed, he wanted to sleep. Curling over, he lay across the tiny area of the floor. He tried to ignore the various smells that rose up and the various objects that came in contact with his skin—and when, at last, he was on the point of sleeping, he heard the roar of an engine and the shriek of tyres as a car braked suddenly.

There were a great many voices again. They began to echo up out of the dark as if they had been there all the time, lying in wait.

He heard someone say, ‘He’s dangerous.’

Footsteps approached the hut. They came unrhythmically across the soft earth and then stopped. Berg sat up and stared through the darkness in the direction of the door. It was pushed open and a flashlight picked out his face. The spiked arc of light was a painful thing that burned his eyes, causing him to raise his hands over his face.

‘Come out,’ someone said.

He got to his feet and, tracked by the flashlight, stepped outside. The clear night air was unbelievably pure: it rushed against him and he choked on it. Several hands pushed him forward.

‘He’s covered in shit,’ someone said. ‘Look out.’

Stumbling through the mud again, he was pushed towards a car that was parked at the side of the road. One door was open. As he went towards the car he had the impression that a multitude of eyes were following him, but when he looked round he saw nothing but the three or four men behind him and the deserted rubble of the Site.

‘He’s covered in it,’ someone said.

Another voice said. ‘Who put him in there for fuck’s sake?’

He stopped just outside the car. Sooner or later, he knew that the opportunity to make a run for it would come again. But this was not the right one.

He went into the car. Pieces of excrement, human or otherwise, began to flake and fall from his clothes. He slumped in the seat next to the steering-wheel.

The men who had released him from the hut entered the car. One of them opened the windows. Another switched on the engine and reversed the car clumsily, striking something hard.

When they were driving back in the direction of the town, Berg said, ‘It’s cold—can I close the window?’

Nobody answered him.

Eleven

Sbodin was sitting behind a desk. He still wore his raincoat and his hat lay in front of him. When Berg was brought into the room, the investigator said nothing for some length of time. He pressed the tips of his fingers to his lips and stared at something on the desk. But apart from the hat Berg could see nothing, no object likely to hold Sbodin’s attention so completely. Minutes went past. Berg stood in the middle of the room and looked around. It wasn’t a large room. The walls were painted a regulation shade of brown and the weak electric light was reflected back palely. Apart from the desk and Sbodin’s chair there were no other items of furniture—unless you counted the waste-basket and the telephone.

And then Sbodin said, ‘What a pity you took the wrong turning, Berg. But it was a worthwhile attempt.’ He fidgeted with his hat as if nervous. ‘Now that we’ve fetched you back, I think my case is watertight, don’t you? If you were really innocent, you wouldn’t have run.’

Berg said, ‘I ran because I was innocent.’ He looked at Sbodin and wondered when he was going to mention the widow.

‘You ran because you were innocent,’ he said flatly. In the near-empty room his voice echoed a little. The last syllable of innocent came back like a pale whisper. He rose from the desk, lifting his hat.

Berg saw that beneath the hat lay a pistol. It gleamed: it was the gleam as much as anything that took Berg’s attention. He stared at it like a child attracted by a shining object. He had never before seen a pistol close to. The size of it impressed him and it looked heavy, much heavier than he would have imagined. An urge to touch it came over him and he made an imperceptible movement forward before he checked himself.

‘Do you like the gun, Berg?’

‘I wouldn’t say that I like it exactly——’

‘But it attracts you?’

Berg was silent. Sbodin began to move round the room, keeping close to the walls, and then he stopped immediately behind Berg. Berg realised then that he was nearer to the gun than he was to the investigator. If he were to move quickly—— But no; it was too obviously a trap. Probably it wasn’t even loaded, probably Sbodin wanted him to reach for it. Another of his devious plans. As soon as he picked it up Sbodin would no doubt pull another gun from his coat and fire. That was almost certainly the situation. He stood very still, hardly breathing. With a little insight it was possible to play Sbodin’s games and even win some of them.

‘The gun attracts you?’ Sbodin asked.

‘I’m not going to pick it up. I’ve never handled a gun before.’

‘Go on,’ Sbodin said. ‘Feel it.’

Berg said nothing. He listened to the investigator’s heavy breathing. A moment passed before Sbodin moved and made his way back to the desk.

‘Why did you run away?’

‘You know why. I wanted to prove my innocence.’

‘You keep talking about your innocence, Berg. If you were really innocent, would I want to see you punished? Would I? I’m not an unfair man, am I? This job is difficult enough—but I think I keep some sort of control. I think I manage to keep a balance, don’t you?’ He stared at Berg. His eyes were barely visible. ‘It’s very hard, but I manage.’

‘I’m not guilty,’ Berg said. When was Sbodin going to say something about the widow? He had a mental image of the widow at the bottom of the stairs: there was something obscene in the roundness of her eyes, in the glazed expression. But his memory was flawed. He knew intuitively that when he had looked at her she was not staring at him. He was positive that the eyes had been closed.

‘So you thought if you made a run for it everything would clear itself up, did you? Where were you trying to run to, Berg? I sat down and worked it out. You were going for the border, weren’t you? You thought you’d slip across the border and be safe over there. That was very naive of you. In the first place there are guards who ask—politely, mind you—to look at such formalities as identification papers and entrance visas. In the second place, even if you had slipped past them there are extradition arrangements. You’d have been picked up and brought back.’ The investigator looked at the gun for a moment. ‘You were heading for the border—isn’t it ironic that you ended up at the site?’

‘Ironic?’

Sbodin sat down. ‘You’re really in trouble now, Berg. Do you realise that?’

Shifting his feet, Berg had the feeling that he was about to be unjustly punished by a censorious adult, that he was a child again in a world where adult expressions and adult behaviour were beyond his comprehension. He stared at the light-bulb. It flickered bleakly, reminding him of something—even if he did not know what.

‘First the widow——’

‘The widow?’

Sbodin said, ‘Yes, the widow. That poor woman,’

‘What do you mean—that poor woman?’

The investigator picked up his gun, handled it. ‘She’s dead. I found her at the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t fall down—you wouldn’t try to tell me that, would you? She didn’t fall down a flight of stairs she must have climbed and descended thousands of times. You pushed her. When I saw her she was quite dead.’

‘No, I don’t believe that.’ Berg saw the round shadow of the gun’s barrel. ‘I didn’t push her. What actually happened was that she——’

‘Please, Berg. I’m not going to listen.’

Berg moved to the desk. There was a faint smell from the gun—of warm metal, cleaning fluid, and something else he did not recognise.

‘You killed the widow.’

Berg said, ‘Prove it.’

‘The circumstantial evidence is strong. Can you disprove it?’

Berg placed his hands on the edge of the desk. ‘I didn’t kill her. I’m quite incapable of killing.’

‘No more, Berg.’

‘At school I didn’t even play games. I didn’t want to take the chance of hurting someone. I can’t stand violence. I can’t stand pain. Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you that I wouldn’t hurt a fly. And now you say that I killed the widow. It’s preposterous.’

Berg stared at Sbodin and tried to remember what had happened. He had gone through the skylight—the widow, the stupid bitch, had hung to his legs. And then, quite suddenly, she had slipped. He remembered it clearly. She had slipped and slipped and gone on slipping all the way down the stairs.

‘Her neck was broken,’ Sbodin said.

‘She slipped. I saw her slip.’

Sbodin stared down at the gun. ‘You’ll hang, of course. It’s really too bad.’

‘She slipped. I was there at the time. I saw what happened.’

Sbodin put the gun into his coat and stood up. Yawning, he stretched his arms. Berg watched him, as if waiting for his expression to change, as if in the thin hope that he might suddenly smile and say: Go home, run along, the whole thing—Monika, the widow—the whole thing’s been a bad joke. But Sbodin dropped his arms, sighed wearily, and asked:

‘Why did you strangle your mother?’

Twelve

They were walking across a yard, Sbodin a few feet behind, talking about how comfortable the cell would be. A soft rain had started to fall. Berg thought it strange that he had no idea about time. All his life he had been accustomed to clocks—he had been accustomed to administer certain sorts of tablets at certain hours, certain powders at certain other hours, certain liquids at other hours still. If he tried hard he could even repeat the routine to himself: nine o’clock—green liquid; nine-twenty five—yellow pills; ten-five—white powder. But what was that Sbodin had said about his mother? It was some sort of joke—in very poor taste, but all Sbodin’s jokes were in poor taste. Why did you strangle your mother? Was that the question? It hardly seemed a question at all—it was one of those trick questions they sometimes put in at the end of examination papers. They had to be answered in a special sort of way. You could not treat them normally. They looked like ordinary questions, yes, but they demanded a different sort of answer. Sbodin’s question was like that: in reality, he was asking about something else altogether even if Berg could not think what.

Why did you strangle your mother? Hearing Sbodin’s steps behind him made him think, for some reason, of the very last time he had seen his mother. She was fast asleep. She had fallen asleep on the sofa and he had carried her, very gently, to her room. And then, after a few moments to be absolutely sure, he took his suitcase and departed. The memory of all that was vague now—but then so many things had happened to him in the meantime. Yet he felt that that was how it had been—lifting her calmly and with all the gentleness he had, from the sofa to the bed. That was his memory of it. Like an over-exposed photograph it was blurred, but he was sure that essentially this was right.

And now Sbodin’s question—what did it really mean? Somehow he felt like laughing aloud, like laughing and listening to the drift of his laughter as it went spinning across the yard, over the wall and into the night. First Monika; second the widow; third his mother. Sbodin’s trilogy was an insane joke. You could only react to insane jokes by laughing at them.

And he did laugh.

‘I don’t see anything funny,’ Sbodin said.

Stopping a moment by the wall, Berg waited for his laughter to subside. He realised that the conspiracy—that was the only name he could put to the sequence of events—he was aware that the conspiracy against him would, under close scrutiny, fall apart. Sbodin could never hope to bring a successful case against him.

He thought about his mother. Perhaps in the morning he would send her a cable, telling her what had happened. She would find it funny too, in a different sort of way. He laughed again, and Sbodin prodded him to move.

‘Come on, it’s cold. The sooner I can get you into your cell, the sooner I can get to bed.’

‘Wait. My side hurts.’

‘In a very short time, you’ll cease to feel pain,’ Sbodin said.

Berg wanted to ask what Sbodin’s question really meant: if it was a trick question then he had to be very careful. Did you strangle your mother? Why did you strangle your mother? Did you strangle her because you hated her? It was rather strange, but he could no longer remember Sbodin’s exact question.

He said, ‘What did you say about my mother?’

Sbodin said, ‘She was found in her apartment. She had been dead for some time. Our estimation of the time of her death coincides with the night you left the capital.’

Berg remembered now. On the night he left the capital it was raining. His mother had been complaining about the weather. She had been saying how the damp atmosphere affected her health. While talking in this monotonous way she had become drowsier, yawning much of the time. And then, exactly as he remembered, she had fallen asleep. He had lifted her into the bedroom. There was about this memory a certain sort of feeling, as if he knew it wasn’t exactly right but that it was as near as he was likely to get.

He turned to look at Sbodin. ‘I must say that I find your humour in the worst possible taste.’ The remark echoed on his lips for a moment and was snatched away by the rain.

‘Keep moving, Berg.’

They moved along the wall. ‘I love my mother,’ Berg said. ‘If I hated her, as you imply, would I have spent so many years looking after her?’

Sbodin shrugged. He was tired now. His face seemed smaller to Berg than before, and paler.

‘But I wanted a change,’ Berg said. ‘I had to get away from home. There’s a time in everybody’s life, isn’t there, when they want a little freedom?’

Sbodin yawned. He looked miserably through the rain, scratching his hands with a bored expression.

‘Not much further,’ he said. ‘Keep moving.’

They turned a corner. There, looming up through the dark, was a sight that suddenly numbed Berg. He was looking at a scaffold. It seemed pathetically thin, far too frail to bear the weight of any man—living or dead. He stopped and Sbodin, a few feet behind, coughed a couple of times. The shadow of a rope hung down, sodden by rain. Berg thought that rain would surely swell the fibres of the rope, making it stiff and flexible. It was another of Sbodin’s jokes to lead him in this direction quite deliberately so that he would see the gallows upon which Sbodin wanted him hanged. It wasn’t exactly funny this time: even for Sbodin it was in the worst possible taste.

‘What’s that?’ Berg asked.

‘That’s where you’ll die.’

Why did you strangle your mother? The question reverberated in his head and he had the strange intuition that behind the question lay a direct threat. Sbodin really wanted to say: I am going to strangle you. Sbodin wanted him to mount those steps, walk towards the rope, fix it around his neck like a collar, and then drop forever through a trapdoor.

Rain swept across his face. Between his lips he could taste it. It had an unusual taste, faintly acid. He leaned against the wall and looked at Sbodin.

‘You know that I didn’t rape Monika, don’t you? And basically I think you believe that the widow slipped—just as I told you—don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Sbodin said. ‘And I’m of the opinion that your mother strangled herself. Keep moving.’

They moved a little further along the wall.

Berg said, ‘If you believe I’m innocent then, why do you want to punish me?’

Sbodin said nothing. He pushed Berg from behind, forcing him to take a few more steps.

‘Give me a chance. Close your eyes for a minute, let me get away. Why don’t you give me a chance?’

‘Hurry, keep moving.’

They moved on. Berg brushed his shoulder against the wall. He wondered how long it would take to leap over it and make a run for cover somewhere. The wall wasn’t high. It was probably no more than four feet in height. It would be easy to get over it, drop down on the other side, and run. He would be hidden by darkness. Sbodin was tired and therefore his reactions would be slow. Should he take the chance?

They walked a little further. About a hundred yards away was a dark building that Berg assumed was the prison. He could not stand the idea of being forced to spend the night in a cell. He stopped. A door in the building was pushed open and a square of light fell through the rain. The ground glimmered. A man appeared in the doorway and shouted something but his voice was lost in the rain.

‘Who is that?’ Berg asked.

Sbodin said, ‘The jailer. He won’t give you the chance to get free.’

They covered another few yards. Berg thought that if he could get to the capital his mother would conceal him for a few days. The apartment was large, there were at least nine or ten rooms. She would no doubt be annoyed by the fact that he had run away, but she would be pleased—if not to see him—to have someone attend to her prescriptions and medicants. He hesitated. If he went over the wall and made for the railway station and smuggled himself on to a freight train and remained perfectly still for two days he would reach the capital without any trouble. He turned to look at Sbodin. The man was yawning again, his eyes half-shut.

Berg suddenly swung out with his hand, catching Sbodin by surprise and knocking him off balance. He leaped on to the wall and saw that the drop on the other side was almost fifteen feet at a rough estimate—but he would have to take the chance. Sbodin shouted something. Feet clattered across the concrete. Someone else began to shout. Poised on the wall, Berg hesitated: it seemed to him that he held in his grasp in that burning second of time his own future—that the choice to jump would decide the outcome of his life. In that second it seemed that a hundred different thoughts raced through his mind, images that had nothing to do with his present predicament, irrelevant pictures, remembered faces and landscapes, pointless things. He hesitated. Below him lay the leap into darkness. At his back someone was hurrying across the yard and Sbodin, rising with unusual slowness, was calling his name.

Berg looked down. Through the darkness it was impossible to make out shapes. There were shadowy clumps that might have been bushes but he couldn’t be certain.

‘Why don’t you jump, Berg? What are you waiting for?’

He hardly heard Sbodin’s voice. He threw his body into the air and dropped for what felt like a long time. Wind rushed around him, blood whistled in his brain, rain froze against his breath. He heard his mother say that she was waiting for him, she had been waiting for what seemed to her like a long time, growing a little wearier and more impatient with each passing day. He felt his hand, the whorls of his fingertips, imbedded in her flesh.

He saw a single flash reflected in the sky and heard the sound of thunder. He breathed heavily, his arms and legs aching. The fall had cost him a great deal of effort and he knew that until he caught his breath he would not be able to run. Striking the earth hard had shaken his bones. He looked up at the flares that were sparking through the night sky—yet there was an unreality about this sight that he did not entirely understand. The world seemed, quite inexplicably, to have yet another dimension—a place where lights exploded but did not leave after-images in the sky, where sounds coagulated into a meaningless jumble like the rumblings of some monstrous machine.

He held his breath a moment and thought about the sequence of events. His thoughts had a bright new clarity and certain facts became amazingly clear. He was not, as he had previously suspected, the victim of some elaborate joke—he was the victim of a terrible collection of lies and bad judgements. It was astonishing how clear all this now seemed. He was innocent: his one crime—if that was what you could call it—had been to stumble accidentally into a web of malice. He knew beyond any doubt that Monika had lied, that her every utterance had been false. He knew that the widow was not dead, that even now she was in some hospital bed with mild concussion. He knew that Sbodin had been totally misled by a complex tissue of circumstance, falsehood, and his own overwhelming ambition to make an arrest. It was all so ludicrously clear that any minor doubts he might have had about himself disintegrated at once. He had simply been caught up in the complicated interplay between certain people whose versions of reality did not coincide with his own. How clear it all was, how staggeringly clear.

If there was one aspect of it all that he did not understand it was why they were all—without exception—out to destroy him. But even that seemed a minor point now.

He turned on his side and thought of his mother and realised that in a strange way he was looking forward to seeing her again—even if, as he now considered this possibility, he could not bring to mind an image of her face. He felt a slight ache of guilt that he had walked out on her the way he had done and hadn’t written to tell her that he was alive and well.

The sound of voices through the darkness made him want to rise and, breathing heavily, his strength ebbing away like the tide rushing back from a beach, he wondered in which direction he ought to run.

Part Three

‘You realise that there is now no definite proof that Berg committed any crime?’

Jacob Sbodin

One

Sbodin’s superior peered miserably through the darkened rain and the huge splashes that slithered across the lenses of his glasses. Now and again he shivered and turned the collar of his raincoat up to his neck.

He said, ‘I hate being dragged from my bed——’

‘In the circumstances, I wanted to talk to you,’ Sbodin said.

With a great show of impatience, the other man sighed and stamped his feet. ‘Talk. But make it quick.’

Sbodin threw away his sodden cigarette. ‘You already have the report of my investigation of Berg’s activities. It’s quite beyond my experience to make any judgements about the man’s sanity——’

‘Then don’t.’ The other man belched and yawned several times.

‘You realise that there is now no definite proof that Berg committed any crimes? In the case of Monika Jahn, it’s pretty clear that he did in fact rape the woman. The evidence points in that direction.’

‘Hurry,’ the other man said and made a sweeping gesture with his hand.

‘In the case of the widow, how can we ever be sure that she didn’t slip? There is no way of proving that she was pushed. She isn’t going to come back to life and tell us the truth——’

‘Obviously not.’

Sbodin looked round the darkened area in which they stood. He was silent for a time, prodding something that lay on the sodden earth with his foot. And then he said, ‘And as for his mother, don’t you think it too much of a coincidence that the time of her death coincides with Berg’s departure from the city? But how can it ever be proved that she was strangled by her own son? It’s frustrating, because I know that he did it. As for proof …’ Sbodin shrugged and looked at his superior.

The other man said, ‘That’s it. There’s nothing more to talk about. The cases are closed.’

Sbodin seemed not to hear. He said, ‘I found it necessary to shoot him, you do understand that, don’t you? I didn’t aim deliberately to kill. I aimed, as I was taught, to wound. It was dark, I misfired and the bullet penetrated the lung.’

The other man seemed to shrink inside his raincoat. He looked down at Berg’s corpse, now covered by a tarpaulin that was gathering tiny pools of water in its folds.

‘You misfired,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Sbodin said. ‘His death was an accident.’

Both men paused for a moment and then turned and walked up the muddy slope.

About the Author

Campbell Armstrong (1944–2013) was an international bestselling author best known for his thriller series featuring British counterterrorism agent Frank Pagan, and his quartet of Glasgow Novels, featuring detective Lou Perlman. Two of these, White Rage and Butcher, were nominated for France’s Prix du Polar. Armstrong’s novels Assassins & Victims and The Punctual Rape won Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Awards.

Born in Glasgow and educated at the University of Sussex, Armstrong worked as a book editor in London and taught creative writing at universities in the United States.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1970 by Campbell Black

Cover design by Angela Goddard

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0414-5

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

Praise for the Writing of Campbell Armstrong

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Part Two

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Part Three

One

About the Author

Copyright Page