The Pearlkillers Read online

  Anders waded in. The crowd became a mob. He lost his caution, pulled out his pistol and shot three of the ruffians from the other side. He picked Sten up and hauled him away, carried him around the corner into the alleyway, and managed to stuff him inside the cab he had waiting. They drove to Anders’ rooms. He paid the driver and sent his landlady out for her doctor. He was already on good terms with her; she wouldn’t give him away.

  While he waited, he washed the blood off Sten’s face and head. He kept trying to find a pulse, and couldn’t. When the doctor got there, he couldn’t, either. ‘This man is dead,’ he said.

  Anders followed the plan. He slashed open the chair-covers, took out the money hidden there and left town. He kept going, across the border. He didn’t stop until he reached Genoa. After that, he was drunk for fourteen months.

  *

  He took up with a woman who tried to reform him. He switched to another, who died giving birth to a child that was probably not his. Whenever he sobered up, all he could think of was that his life would go on in unhappiness, poverty and abasement, for ever. He didn’t even realize that he was engrossed in his own self-pity; he was too far down.

  One day four people he knew by sight committed suicide: two prostitutes from his neighbourhood drowned themselves, a sailor he sometimes talked to in the taverns was found with his throat cut, and a woman he used to buy flowers from – an old woman – swallowed poison.

  Not long after he’d been told the news, he sat down on the edge of a low wall skirting a small park. He thought about the four. It seemed to him that if they could do it, so could he. And then he thought: Before I do that, I might as well try everything else. He remembered, as if it had been a thing he’d heard about long ago, his plans to sail to South America and study the plants of the jungle.

  He had been away from his country for nearly five years. He could stay away for another ten, twenty, thirty. On the other hand, he was still a ship’s captain and he was in a port town now, and if he wanted to sail to South America, he could actually do it. There was only the matter of the papers to be attended to.

  He sat for hours, turning over the prospects of death and of South America. It was like the time when the two waves came rushing at each other: he hadn’t imagined such a thing before. Nor did he want to dream of another, future existence that lay beyond the park and the wall he was sitting on. He had reached a point where once again his life stood still, as it had when he had received all living action across the chasm of his speech lessness.

  There was a choice. The thought astounded him. It kept him occupied for days. He stopped drinking. His heart pounded wildly and his hands shook. He had frightening dreams. But at the end of two months, he shipped out.

  And during the next five years, when he was working as a riverboat captain on the Amazon, he did make many excursions into the jungle. He developed an affection for its plants and trees, and made drawings and paintings of them, even though he hadn’t been trained for it. He caught the local fevers and fell victim to the prevailing crazes and superstitions, the most dangerous of which was the theory – the certainty – that a young man could make his fortune overnight in the gold mines. But he gave his belief shrewdly. He saw hundreds of the young men, poor and newly wealthy, riding up and down his river. He took their money at cards. Sometimes they paid in nuggets greatly more valuable than the sum of their debts. Anders began to amass a store of gold.

  He saved. He put earnings in the bank. He used his real name, invested and bought stocks. When he made money from goldmines it was because he had shares in them.

  Twice he was lost in the jungle. The second time it happened to him, he was sure he’d die there. He became delirious and was convinced that his old friend, Martin, was walking beside him, talking to him all the way, telling him how to get out. It really seemed that he was hearing the voice and aware, even though he didn’t look, of another body keeping step beside him. He spoke back, glad to be using his own language.

  When he reached the river again that second time, he began to long for his old home. He suddenly missed everything about it and everyone there. He thought of his children, especially his little daughter who had flung her arm around his neck and cried.

  Would his family still be waiting for him? When he remembered them, he wanted to put his hands over his face. But he was unable to stop his thoughts; they turned more and more often to home. He had dreams about walking by the lake, hunting in the woods, sailing through the islands.

  He made his decision. He worked out his story and he came back a rich man.

  *

  ‘It’s been a long time, eh?’ Sten said. ‘And what a big place you’ve got here. Enormous. Even your house: It’s so big, I couldn’t find the front door. But it’s better this way, isn’t it? I’ve found you instead.’ He leaned on the stick, which was of an elegant slimness: a thing designed for city walking. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘at last I meet the family.’

  ‘No,’ Anders told him.

  Sten stepped forward. He opened his mouth, showing decayed brown and black teeth. As he laughed shortly, the stench of them reached Anders.

  ‘Why not? One of your oldest friends. If you don’t invite me in, my old friend, I’m going to begin to tell my story. I’ll start by saying that all the time you were supposed to be having great adventures in South America, you were really just living with me in Vienna, where you earned your living as my pimp. That doesn’t sound very nice, does it?’

  ‘No, and it’s only partly true.’

  ‘That’s the part that counts, Anders.’

  ‘All right,’ Anders said. ‘Come in, but be quiet. If you make any noise, if you start demanding anything of me, believe me you won’t get far. If you behave yourself, we’ll see. I suppose you want money. You look as if you need it.’ He turned back to his study, entered and stood inside the glass door. He had grown to love the room so much that it pained him to allow the man in.

  Sten dragged himself forward across the threshold, over the Chinese rug and up to a chair that Anders indicated. As he held out his hand towards the chair, Anders knew that he would never again want to sit there himself. Sten peered around the room. He dropped his knapsack on the floor and leaned the stick against the side of the chair. Perhaps his eyesight was beginning to break down, like the rest of his body; but he would still be too vain to wear spectacles. He took a good grip on the arms of the chair as he lowered himself into the seat and then stretched his right leg out in front of him.

  Anders thumped down in his chair at the desk. ‘We’re alone here in this part of the house,’ he said. ‘Just tell me first of all: where are you staying?’

  ‘In the village.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Some sort of rest home for sailors. It’s like a hotel, but much more respectable. No liquor on the premises.’

  ‘Just as well. What name are you using?’

  ‘Strohmeyer.’

  ‘Of course. When did you arrive?’

  ‘Last night. I had to rest. I’ve changed a great deal, don’t you think?’

  ‘Naturally. So have I.’

  ‘But you –’

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Anders asked.

  ‘Not for the moment. Later, perhaps.’

  Anders nodded. He was trying to plan ahead. They would talk; he could tell Ingrid that he had to discuss something with a man who’d come about the horses. And he’d ask for a cold supper and wine on a tray. There would be no need for anyone to see more than a glimpse of Sten. Ingrid’s eyesight was pretty poor anyway. And when they’d settled the terms, he could drive Sten back in the trap. But – if he gave out too much money, Sten would be able to drink; if he drank enough, he might talk. It all depended on how strong Sten was and, of course, on what he really wanted. If he had come to blackmail, that was one thing. But if he had come back to try to destroy the family, that was something else. He might. That might be just what he would want.

  ‘It’s considerate of you to ask,’ Sten s
aid hoarsely. His skinny hands rested in a knot at the top of the walking stick where there should have been an ornamental knob; the colour of the wood showed that added decoration had once had a place there, perhaps made of silver or some other valuable metal that had been removed to raise cash.

  ‘I eat very little nowadays. Everything seems to disagree with me. And you? It looks as if you’re sitting just where all things in creation do agree with you. Yes, indeed. You were always the one who got away with everything.’

  Anders stared into the bookcase next to his head. He looked at the titles without reading them. He put his elbows on his desk, his face in his fists.

  ‘I’ve had illnesses,’ Sten said, ‘some of which you know about. You got away without them too, didn’t you? I never knew how you managed that, not when we were so close to each other.’

  Anders turned his head. He remembered every detail of how Sten had once looked and recalled how conscious and finicky he had been of his appearance, which had been his fortune long before they had met: the means by which he had – from the early days of his childhood – always obtained everything he wanted. It was nightmarish to hear Sten’s voice coming out of this false front; it was as if the twisted, gnomelike old man had been the real person all along, and what Anders had seen before had been the mask. But the mask was what he knew and remembered.

  ‘Don’t begin accusing me again,’ he said. ‘You loved prostituting yourself. You enjoyed corrupting people. It made you feel powerful. Whores usually have a rough time when their looks start to go. You were always complaining about every spot and pimple. And everything was my fault. You couldn’t stand it that I wasn’t like you.’

  ‘But you were seduced.’

  ‘Oh yes, for a time. As a matter of necessity.’

  ‘As a matter of choice, Anders.’

  ‘For a while. Does it make a difference any more?’

  ‘It might make a difference to your respectable friends.’

  ‘And you could find out if you enjoy the jails over here as much as the ones in Vienna. I don’t know what that would add to your health.’

  ‘Don’t joke about it,’ Sten told him. ‘Once your health breaks down, there’s nothing you can do.’ He looked suddenly fanatical. ‘It’s like the bobsleds,’ he said; ‘you’re on the downward run and there’s no way to climb off. It goes down and down, and death is at the bottom.’

  ‘We all get there in time,’ Anders said.

  Sten laughed again, uncovering the ravaged teeth. He said, ‘Well, well, that’s how it is. I’m old and feeble now. And you look very sleek; hale and hearty – yes, a treat for the ladies, I’m sure. But I’m stronger than you, Anders. Do you know what my strength is? I’ve got nothing to lose: that’s my strength.’

  ‘Everybody’s got something to lose. Unless you’ve come here to try to force me into killing you.’

  ‘You’d like to, wouldn’t you?’

  Anders turned his head away again. He gazed at the volume of poetry on the desktop. There was a pistol in the top right-hand drawer and he knew that it was loaded. He looked up at the books on their shelf and at the long-breasted gold idol that seemed to be snarling at him. Of course the gods were like that. You couldn’t believe otherwise for very long.*

  *

  He could tell his family the truth. He was going to have to tell them; not everything, naturally, but the general outline. Who would mind the most? Or the least? Erika, he knew, was one of the few who wouldn’t care. If it weren’t for people like that, civilization would never move forward; their attitudes were ahead of the rest, towards the future. Of the others, his sister, Elsie, would be the first to understand, and next would come Lina. And even so, even if in the end they were to forgive him completely, they would regard the lie, the pretence, as a particularly reprehensible form of infidelity. And they would be right: he had deceived them.

  There were some things Sten couldn’t accuse him of without giving himself away; he’d have to keep silent about the whole of Vienna. But what really troubled Anders was before Vienna – the fact that the expedition hadn’t gone anywhere, that there had never been travels and discoveries, that its very existence had been fabricated. All Sten had to do was point the finger at him.

  If Anders told everyone, what could happen? Louise would be slow to forgive him, as she had been slow to forget the man she had loved. She hung on tightly both to injury and to sentiment. When he recalled the careful gentility of her new husband, Kellner, he doubted that either of them would be able to side with him against the weight of the gross, roistering scandal that would fall upon him and his name. That journalist, Petersen, would do his best to see that no one escaped the notoriety – one could depend on that.

  He tried to imagine sitting them all down and telling them: This is what really happened. And, all at once, he knew what the worst would be – his children; the two daughters, who needed heroes and romance, and whose hopes of marriage to the kind of man they desired were going to depend on their father’s ability to keep the truth hidden. Even money had its limits; if you were rich enough, you could get away with murder, but you couldn’t expect your children to be invited out afterwards.

  It was no good. He couldn’t explain. If it weren’t for the girls, he’d have the courage. It was too late now. He’d told the false story and then, to protect himself against the newspapers, he’d published. One error led to another; it was just like those French farces and there was the same confusion of identity, the same fatal ability to become mistaken.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ he said.

  ‘And I knew you were somewhere, although I never suspected you’d come back here. But I keep up with one or two people in this part of the world. Friends of Gustav. Gustav was very good to me.’

  ‘Yes, I remember how you used to hold that over my head. How good he was to you, and how much he loved you.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Oh, the truth.’

  ‘But that wasn’t the way I found you. I was in jail, you know.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘A misunderstanding. And I was ill. I caught consumption. I thought it was the end. They took me out, and I finished the sentence in the hospital. I met a very interesting doctor there.’

  ‘I can picture it.’

  ‘The genuine article. A professor of medicine. A man of scholarship. He was the one who made the diagnosis. You know, they write papers about me now. Yes. I’ve got such an extraordinary liver, it’s diseased in more ways than the doctors ever dreamed of. It seems to be quite a medical phenomenon. And my kidneys – they’re hardly sure I’ve still got any: the poor things have just shrunken away. Yes, indeed. I’ve had everything in the encyclopaedia. I’m a walking wreck. Only my head – my head is very hard. And my pulse was always erratic, you should have remembered that.’

  ‘One can’t remember everything.’

  ‘No, but one should. I’ve got a good memory.’

  ‘Too good. It adds things.’

  ‘This professor: he thought my case was so interesting that he let me come to him as a private patient, for free.’

  ‘Yes?’ Whatever else had gone wrong after they’d parted, Sten had retained the instinct for latching on to people who could give him the right information, or be helpful to him somehow.

  ‘And while I was in his waiting room one day, I was looking through the medical journals there, and you’ll never guess what I saw – what a piece of luck: your name, right there. And a story about the expedition you’d led to South America. The doomed, heroic attempt.’

  Anders rose from his chair, reached up and pulled the bell cord.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sten snapped.

  ‘If you’re going to want anything to eat, I’ll have to let them know in the kitchen.’

  ‘I would have found you anyway, in the end, no matter where you’d gone. I still know where people hide themselves.’

  Anders edged towards the door. When he thought he could hear Ingrid a
pproaching, he said, ‘Stay right where you are.’

  ‘Don’t excite yourself. It takes me a long time now to get up out of a chair. A legacy from my loving family. Broke my bones to make me limber. There was no shape I couldn’t get into. As you know.’

  Anders opened the door and stood outside it. He gave Ingrid the order for two meals and said to tell the family that he was having a talk with a man about the horses; and that they were not to be disturbed.

  He returned to his place at the desk. Sten said, ‘I did enjoy all your pretty little pictures of flowers.’

  If it weren’t for Sten, he’d probably be safe. The only really uncertain time was the voyage from Genoa, but he’d made that under a different name. He hadn’t resumed his own identity until he’d arrived in the New World. The men who had been on that ship might recognize him, though he didn’t think so. They wouldn’t be likely to visit his part of the globe. And he doubted that any of them could read. He wondered, while Sten talked, if there was another way in which the past might catch up with him.

  ‘I’ve got a picture, too,’ Sten went on. ‘I’ve got a photograph of both of us together in Budapest. Remember?’

  ‘In my experience, most photographs tend to make everyone look alike.’

  ‘Not this one.’

  ‘Let’s see it.’

  ‘If you like,’ Sten said. ‘I’ve got lots of copies.’ He put a hand into his inside breast pocket, delved around, and pulled out a square of cardboard which he held up.

  Anders crossed the room to see. He didn’t want to touch the thing. He leaned over Sten, conscious of the reek of his teeth and what might have been the smell of his clothes and body too. He looked.

  He remembered the picture, and when it had been taken. It was a good one. They both looked many years younger, well-dressed, full of high spirits.