The punctual rape, p.12
The Punctual Rape, page 12
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.
