The Sweetness of Life Page 15

  Crappy self-control, he thought, and he recalled those months of his analysis training when he would regularly get an erection on the couch. He would lie down, then bang, there it was—a stiffy. In the beginning he had almost died of embarrassment, then it made him aggressive, finally he tried to ignore it. His analyst had been pretty relaxed about it. When one day he asked her, “Does it make you happy then?” she said, “Well, what do you think? Of course it makes a woman of my age happy.” At the time she was somewhere between seventy and seventy-five, tall, slim, and quite frail-looking. She always wore her hair pinned up stylishly. He remembered that later he had had all sorts of thoughts about closeness, touching, and masturbation, and his automatic erections had disappeared by themselves.

  Irene put down her knife and fork and looked at him. “I’ve been feeling scared recently,” she said. Horn dipped a bit of baguette into the fluffy mass of tomato and egg.

  “Because of Michael?” he asked, putting it into his mouth and chewing with pleasure. She shook her head.

  “Because of Gabriele?”

  “No, not worried, I mean scared.”

  “But you’re never scared,” Horn said. “You pick up sea urchins with your bare hands. You sit alone on stage and play Bach or Saint-Saëns. You leave Vienna for the provinces. Being scared doesn’t suit you. In our relationship I’m the one who’s scared.” She shook her head again and swallowed. Horn put down the pepper mill he had just reached for. “Are you being serious?”

  She nodded. “It’s the animal thing,” she said.

  “What animal thing?”

  “The thing that’s in the paper.”

  His instinctive reaction was to turn around. The cat was lying asleep in front of the heater. “It’s about Mimi too, of course,” Irene said. “But not just her.” Every night she had bad dreams, and the first thing she thought about in the morning was those dead animals: chickens, ducks, hamsters, guinea pigs, cats. She had read in the paper that four cats had now been killed. “Who could do a thing like that?” Horn shrugged. The strange thing was that the deaths of those animals scared her more than the Wilfert case.

  “A psychopath could,” Horn said finally. “A real psychopath.” Irene said that she did not know any psychopaths, but Horn said that he knew plenty.

  Horn stood up, fetched a side plate from the cupboard, shoveled on some omelet, and gave it to the cat. She opened one eye and sniffed. Psychopaths are all about terror and destruction, Horn said, about scaring other people and then destroying them. By contrast, most were incapable of feeling fear themselves. “Put a knife to their chests and they’ll laugh in your face,” he said. “If you take the knife away, they’ll kill you.” The cat arched its back, took a few exploratory licks at the mass of egg, and started eating. We’ll keep her locked in, Horn thought, we won’t let her outside anymore. The person responsible had not gone into anybody’s house. Into open stables and boathouses, yes; into closed buildings, no. He thought of the description of the half-severed and crushed duck heads in the last Kurier article, and he thought of somebody he could imagine doing such things, but that person was unlikely to be responsible in this instance because he was sitting in prison.

  “Do psychopaths like music?” Irene said.

  Horn looked surprised. “What a ridiculous question!” he said.

  “It’s not a ridiculous question at all.”

  “Yes it is. It reminds me of those painted wooden signs you could buy when I was a boy: ‘Make your home where you hear song . . .’”

  “‘. . . for bad men never sing along.’ Precisely. My aunt had it hanging in her hallway, together with a pair of mice.”

  “There you go then. How ridiculous is that?”

  “It might just be true,” she said. Next school year, the psychopathic minister of education of this psychopathic province wanted to cut one third of music lessons for the younger school pupils, which must mean the loss of at least one full-time post at her school; as she was the only one of the three music teachers without a teaching degree, it was obvious who would get the chop. “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “First they scare me; then they do away with me.” Horn put down his fork and offered her his hand.

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” he said. “You’ll take on more private pupils, you’ll have more spare time, and I’ll do more work.” Irene raised an eyebrow and said nothing. She’s depressed, he thought, a number of things frighten her, and I don’t know what to do.

  He had wrapped a scarf around his face, pulled the hood of his coat down over his ears, and braced himself against the snow that was drifting horizontally toward him. Irene had asked him again whether he would like a lift into town, but he declined. There was nothing more sublime than a snowstorm, and very few things to which he felt so physically close. Even as a child he had loved bad weather, and even then nobody had understood him. Time after time he would run in the rain until his entire body was drenched, and one winter while he was still at primary school he had gone outside into several snowfalls and played “I’m freezing.” He had been able to feel the gradual fading of the warmth from his fingers and toes, and he had always ignored his parents’ nagging.

  Now he pulled the peak of his hood right down over his forehead. In spite of this, snowflakes hung on his eyelids the moment he lifted his head even slightly. The wind sang as it hit the edge of the transformer station roof, and clouds of new snow sprayed from the young spruces by the roadside. Nothing further in the distance was visible: not the town, not the lake, not even the small pine woods to the southwest of the house.

  In the end he had been able to soothe Irene’s fears somewhat. They had agreed to wait and see what happened before worrying about her possible redundancy, and they had devised a surveillance and provisioning plan for Mimi that was watertight until Tobias got back. Irene had, of course, refused to accept his argument that it was only pets in the town itself that had been killed up to now. Her geography was not that bad, she said; although the wildlife observation center was close to the town’s outer limits, it was still quite clearly outside the boundary. And when he said that snow and freezing temperatures were bound to prevent cats from going outside, she retaliated with, “You obviously don’t know your own pet.” But he found himself mentally scanning the building from top to bottom, hunting for holes through which the cat could sneak out. He was relieved when he could not find any.

  While he fought his way along the highway he could not help thinking of Daniel Gasselik, in spite of all efforts to the contrary. He remembered his sparing movements, his uncannily stilted speech, and the way in which he used to crack his right middle finger. Horn had come into contact with him twice. The first time was three years before, when the then thirteen-year-old kept on bragging at school that he was going to get the green Grand Cherokee with the chrome bull bars from his father’s firm, and mow down the parents and siblings of some of his classmates. The youth welfare service had said that he ought to undergo immediate and intensive psychotherapy and had issued written instructions to that effect. When the boy appeared before him he told Horn to go fuck a pumpkin—a yellow butternut squash would be best because it was suitable for floppy dicks. He could shove his psychotherapy up his ass, as far as his appendix; he had just learned in biology that the appendix was at the beginning of the colon.

  The second encounter had taken place about eight months ago, during criminal proceedings that resulted in Gasselik’s going to prison. The youth had driven through town on a Vespa that he had taken from one of the mechanics at his father’s firm. Along the lake, then up Fürstenaustraße to the Walzwerk estate. There, he was forced to brake in front of a ten-year-old Turkish boy crossing the road. He came to an abrupt halt, turned off the Vespa, ran over to the boy, and floored him beside a large fountain with a kick to the chest. When the boy grasped the edge of the fountain to pull himself up, Gasselik said that if he did not put his hand back down on the ground as if he were dead, he would break his arm. In tears, the boy ign
ored the threat and continued trying to stand, so Gasselik leaped on his lower arm with both feet. The boy had let out a scream that witnesses claimed sounded like an Asiatic war cry.

  The proceedings had come to a very speedy conclusion. At the trial, Gasselik’s father said that he couldn’t stand it when a nigger got in his way either, while Gasselik himself remained silent for the most part, smirking his way through the trial. It was Gasselik’s lawyer who came up with the idea of a neurological examination. He said that they might find a fault in the workings of his client’s brain, or a minor trauma, and this might provide some mitigating circumstances. It was no surprise that Horn had landed the job. Apart from the fact that he already knew of Gasselik, he was the only trained child psychiatrist in the surrounding area, giving him no chance to duck out of it. In the end he had written a pointedly neutral report: although it underlined the complete lack of any emotional attachment to his parents as a fundamental psychodynamic element of Daniel Gasselik’s personality disorder, it emphasized that this could not be equated with a reduced capacity for reasoning and judgment. Not least because he had two previous convictions for theft and attempted robbery, Gasselik was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment—nine months of which was suspended—for grievous bodily harm with intent, as it was called. Everybody considered that a fair outcome. Even Seihs, the secretary of the Business Party, had said in a newspaper interview, “Nobody breaks people’s arms in our town, not even Turkish people’s arms.”

  Right next to the signpost pointing to the hospital, a gray station wagon that must have taken the bend too quickly was stuck in snow. To the eye the car seemed to blend in perfectly with its surroundings and, as the wind kept on blowing over the warning triangle, the driver stood there alerting other cars to the hazard by waving. Horn passed by without asking whether he could be of assistance. The man would have contacted the breakdown service long ago, and the only thing which interested Horn was whether or not the car was on summer tires. I’m just as much of a psychopath as all the rest, he thought.

  At the entrance to the children’s ward, Magdalena, the red-haired sister with the pierced upper lip, was trying to explain to a girl, perhaps six years of age and bawling her eyes out, that visiting time had not yet begun and that her parents would come soon. The little girl did not appear to believe her, and she was not placated when Horn bent down as he passed and said, “My cat sends its love.” Magdalena shrugged, gave a somewhat resigned smile, and pointed to the other end of the ward.

  “Both your ladies are here already,” she said.

  Luise Maywald had called the previous day and requested an extra session for Katharina. Unlike the other occasions, she had sounded rather confused and hysterical, and it had taken Horn some time to grasp that the reason for this was her father’s impending funeral. It would be fine with the two older children, she had said, they understood what had happened. They had been told that it was an evil person; there were such people around who could just appear from somewhere and kill somebody. And she had explained in great detail about the brass band and the coffin being lowered into the ground and flowers being thrown on top. But she was very unsure about Katharina, as the child was still saying nothing at all. She might start howling at the graveside, behave in a peculiar fashion, or even run away. She was afraid of all these things, because, after all, it was her father, and even though she had already said good-bye to him inside and was ready for the moment the gravedigger started turning the crank handle, she knew she would be deeply affected by the occasion and would not have the nerves to cope with a daughter going crackers. “Teach her,” she had said again and again. “Please, teach her!” and he had asked himself: What?

  For the first time since he had met her the woman was wearing black—a long wool skirt and a very loosely knitted turtleneck sweater. The day before the funeral, he thought, getting in the mood. Then he thought of Careless Love and track four, and how Heidemarie was depressed because of unconscious death wishes directed toward her parents, and that there was nobody who was even dreaming of slitting her father’s throat. There was no justice in the world, particularly in who got killed and who did not, but doctors should not think like that.

  Katharina had put the yellow toy box beside her. Its contents were supposed to make the wait more bearable for children. On the small, low table in front of her a princess doll in a pink tulle dress lay on its back. Using everything that was to hand—toy bricks, Playmobil trees, dolls’ crockery—she had started to build an arch-shaped construction by the doll’s head. It’s still about heads, Horn thought. At the same time something flashed through his mind, at the very edge of his consciousness. Then it disappeared again. He could not figure out what it was; that annoyed him.

  “Thank you for taking the time,” Luise Maywald said.

  “It sounded like it was urgent,” said Horn. He was pleased that she was no longer asking him to teach the girl something.

  She nodded. “It’s all a bit too much for us.”

  Maybe that’s part of it too, he thought: she’s no less inhibited than her daughter. Her father is the victim of a grisly murder, and she says, “It’s all a bit too much for us.” She looks like a strong woman, but in fact she’s just got a tough protective exterior.

  Katharina grabbed the princess doll by the legs and took it into Horn’s room. As soon as she got through the door she took her boots off. Things are changing, Horn noted with satisfaction. She’s taking off her boots and leaving the green squirrel jacket with her mom. She kneeled by the bookshelves, at the spot where she had spent most of the previous therapy sessions, crouched on her heels, and put the doll on the ground in front of her. She looked at it, and slowly turned its body around, carefully feeling the tiara and tulle dress. It was then that Horn realized what had escaped his mind before: the girl was no longer clenching her fist. She was using both hands. She had put the two pieces down somewhere. It’s not going to be long now before she starts talking, he thought. Perhaps it had something to do with the funeral.

  Horn fetched two boxes of Lego from the cupboard, and also a large Lego base that had a pond, a river, and a street printed on it. “Out there you started building something around the puppet. I thought you might want to continue with these,” he said. She bent the puppet at the waist, put it on the shelf, and rearranged the skirt. He recalled that there were children—in such a bad state that they could not even play anymore—who would at some point in their therapy start to play “playing.”

  “Would you like a comb for your doll?” he said. She ignored him.

  When he was a child, there had only been the normal Lego bricks in the usual sizes, as well as windows, doors, roofs, wheels and fences. The bases were only small, thirty by thirty centimeters at most. This meant you built houses or cars, maybe trains if you had a lot of wheel bits, but definitely no spaceships, submarines, or complete football stadiums, as was now possible. “I played with Lego when I was a child too,” he said. She looked at him. “Shall we play?” he asked. She shook her head.

  It’s for these sorts of moments that you practice psychotherapy, he thought—there’s a little girl not saying a single word, spending the whole day as if under a bell jar, and at some point you ask her, “Shall we play?” and just like that she shakes her head. He sat down on the ground facing Katharina, picked up one of the two Lego boxes, and emptied it. “Shall we make something?” he said. She pulled her legs up to her chest. “I’ll make something,” he said. Take the inhibition into yourself, he thought. Do what the girl can’t do yet.

  Michael had hated Lego from day one. It had taken some time before Horn had grasped this, and for somebody who had always loved Lego such antipathy was incomprehensible. He had connected it to Michael’s dyslexia, thinking that he did not understand the instructions, or that he had poor spatial awareness. Both of these turned out to be untrue. The simple fact of the matter was that Michael loathed Lego; it seemed as if he would not dream of liking the same things as his father.
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  Horn began building a wall, straight up without any fancy bits. He only used the yellow and green bricks, alternately—one yellow one, one green one. He also started talking about funerals. He told her about cremations and burials. Around here, he said, people preferred burials, because it seemed they were alarmed by the idea of their body being burned, whereas lying in a grave must be like lying in bed. This was also why you had to be silent in graveyards. Of course people knew that the bodies in the graves were dead, but everybody appeared to want to keep up the idea of the big sleep. “The gravedigger digs the hole with a small excavator,” he said. Katharina was looking straight past him. The princess doll was lying to her right. She had closed her hand around its body. Is she listening to me, he wondered? He imagined her looking at her grandfather’s shattered face, and then standing beside the grave, her doll in her hand, and being afraid that she might fall in. He added the last bricks; there were only green ones left at the end. The wall was seven rows high. He had only managed to start the eighth one. “Finished,” he said, then asked, without expecting any reaction, “Where did you leave your two Ludo pieces?”

  Katharina looked around for a while, as if the pieces were hidden somewhere in the room, then she shuffled over to the bookshelf and took out the volume of heroic tales. Not again! he thought. He knew what would follow: endless leafing through the pages from one picture to the other, and whenever she came across a knight with an open visor she would place her finger on his head for thirty seconds or so. I’ve lost her, he thought. For a split second she was connected, and now she’s gone away again. He explained that everybody would be sad at the funeral, and some people would cry—her mom, her dad, sister, and brother. The coffin would look pretty large, almost like a house, with a wreath of flowers on the top, and there would be many other wreaths lying around. People would give speeches, they would sing songs, and then somebody would give the sign, and somebody else would go to the crank and start turning the handle, and the coffin would slowly be lowered into the hole that the small excavator had dug.