“How can I help you?”
Maike’s question comes out perfectly. The redhead is sitting at a desk by the entrance, wearing a pair of large glasses and flipping through a file in slow motion. The detective shifts his weight on the chair. His next position, with one arm resting on the too-high back, is just as uncomfortable as his first.
“I’ve come about Blackmail I and II.”
Maike’s face is a blank surface. “You’ve been to my apartment?”
“Just briefly.”
“Strange that you mention those paintings.”
The voices of the parakeets come through the door from the courtyard—they are starting to comment on the scene. Maike crosses her legs the other way.
“When I came back from vacation today, there was a water stain in the shape of a hand on the wall next to Blackmail I and II.”
Schilf does not reply. He noticed the stain.
“My husband threw a vase against the wall because … Excuse me.” Maike shakes her head. Her lips begin to stretch into a smile for the first time. “It’s not a good day. Signs everywhere.”
The smile spreads and makes the detective’s heart lurch.
“There’s a sad story behind those pictures. The world is full of them.”
“Of pictures? Or sad stories?”
“Perhaps they’re the same thing.”
“You could be right.”
“Do you want to hear the story?”
“Absolutely.”
“IT’S THE FINAL WORK BY THE ARTIST. He put forty pounds of oils on the canvas. Painted as if he were using up his supplies. Then he retired from painting.”
Maike speaks quietly and quickly. The artist, a favorite of the Muses, and Maike’s very own discovery, fell in love one day with a young boy, who soon moved in with him. The relationship was of the kind that turned every park bench into the stage for a Greek tragedy. There was nothing remarkable about the artist’s appearance apart from a pair of incredibly bright eyes, but his boyfriend seemed to be made according to the sketches of a Michelangelo. Slender, dark, and supple. Pure body, no soul.
At gallery receptions, the young man strolled gracefully through the rooms, intent only on distracting the guests from the exhibition. Both men and women gazed after him. If the evening went well, there was more talk about him than about the paintings. He did not like his lover’s work. He did not like art at all. He thought that art existed only to detract from the beauty of life, by which he meant, above all, his own beauty.
“Do you know what jealousy is?” Maike asks.
“From hearsay,” says the detective.
Two years passed. The young man showed off his bruises proudly. When the fighting could escalate no further, he set an ultimatum. It was either him or the paintings.
“The artist chose love,” Schilf guesses.
“Wrong,” Maike says.
The artist chose art. He sent his lover packing and expressed his despair in color, creating Blackmail I and II. After that, his muse left him, too, and followed his boyfriend.
“He never painted anything of note after that,” Maike says. “Sometimes love is a kind of destructive rage.”
She raises her little finger to the corner of her eye as if trying to brush something away. Neither of them feels that the next sentence is their responsibility. While Maike looks down at her feet, the orchestra of thoughts in Schilf’s head plays a polyphonic symphony of questions to ask and statements to make. Philosophical remarks about the architecture of fate. Queries about the price of the paintings that he is supposed to be interested in buying. Banalities about breeding parakeets. When he finally opens his mouth, he has assembled the most deadly collection of words imaginable.
“How are you coping with Ralph Dabbelink’s death?”
Maike jumps up almost before the name is out of his mouth. She looks around as if she has come in here by mistake and stumbled into a conversation among strangers.
“How do you know Ralph?”
“From the newspapers.”
“Did they say I was friends with him?”
“I know that from Sebastian.”
“You’re lying!” Maike shouts.
She is right, for it was not Sebastian who told the detective about Maike’s friendship with Dabbelink, but Maike herself, or, to be precise, her racing bike, combined with the paleness of her cheeks, on which her tan looks artificial. She has pushed both hands into her pockets, and is kneading the fabric of her trousers.
“Who are you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please go.”
Maike walks over and looks directly down at him. Schilf rises clumsily. He can see that she is struggling for composure and losing it. Her self-control is falling away like a broken facade; an expression of naked fury is coming to the fore. When she lifts a pair of touchingly balled fists, Schilf does not feel that her aggression is directed at him. It is Sebastian’s chest that she is punching, Sebastian’s skin that she is digging her nails into. It is also his arm that she is holding on to, and it is even his voice that makes comforting noises. They sink into an embrace that the detective has not sought. He feels the fat of his stomach yielding to Maike’s weight, the softness of his body. It takes only seconds for Maike to push him away from her and re-create some space. The redhead looks over, indifferent as a machine that has not been programmed to deal with occurrences of this kind.