In Free Fall(83)
“Surprised?”
“I have to admit I am, yes.”
“I don’t see any point in cleaning up after my own past. Cumulative chaos is a way of measuring the passage of time.”
He leaps to his feet with predatory agility.
“May I offer you something to drink?”
“Yogi tea, please, in honor of a summer that has suddenly died.”
Oskar raises an eyebrow.
“There is nothing that cannot be had in this apartment.”
Almost as soon as he has left the room, Schilf struggles out of the sofa cushions and slips into the room next door. Under another petrified mass of objects is a desk with its top drawer pulled out. The photograph is in a silver frame of the type in which other men keep pictures of their wives. Sebastian can’t be older than twenty and is wearing a silver cravat and a frock coat. His laugh is a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down to the observer.
“A lovely boy, n’est-ce pas?”
Oskar has entered silently over the stack of rugs. When Schilf turns around, they nearly clash heads. Schilf sees himself in the other man’s black eyes. The master of the house takes the picture out of his hand gently.
“There are few things that are sacred to me.”
“I felt a fondness for your friend right away,” Schilf says. “And I think he felt the same about me.”
“That is the fondness of the bird food for the bird. Come with me.”
Oskar puts the photograph back in the drawer and bundles the detective out of the room. The steaming cups of tea on the side table prove that Schilf has spent at least a quarter of an hour gazing at the photograph. Oskar pours a dash of rum from a white bottle into the cups.
“None for me,” Schilf says.
“I make the rules here.”
The fumes of alcohol prick the detective’s nostrils like long needles even before he takes his first sip. Behind his forehead, something contracts and then expands to twice its original size. Schilf drinks. He feels the alien heartbeat in his head more clearly than ever before. The crow hanging from the ceiling lamp flaps its wings and shadows glide up the walls. Oskar’s face is a solid plane in a web of intertwined curves. Say something, the detective thinks.
“Has Sebastian confessed?” Oskar asks.
“If not, you’ve just betrayed him.”
“Surely not, Detective. I know that you’re not as stupid as your profession would suggest.”
“Did Sebastian tell you that?”
“If you’ve come here hoping that I’ll incriminate him …” Oskar leans forward. “I’d rather rip out my tongue with my bare hands.”
“Now you’re the one playing dumb,” the detective says.
The next sip of tea is better than any medicine. The pressure in his head eases off and the alien heartbeat becomes a monotonous buzz that affects his hearing but not his ability to think clearly.
“I’ve handed the murder case to someone else, by the way.”
Oskar does not permit himself the slightest flicker of surprise. He looks at the detective’s mouth expectantly and lights a cigarette, which Schilf counts as a success.
“I’ve seen you on television. I was impressed by the program. May I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you believe in God?”
It is impossible not to like Oskar when he laughs.
“Sebastian was right,” he says. “You are an unusual detective.”
“So he did talk about me.” Schilf blushes—perhaps it is the alcohol. “Will you answer my question?”
“I’m a religious atheist.”
“Why religious?”
“Because I believe.” Oskar blows smoke off to one side politely. “I believe that the existence of the world cannot be conclusively explained to us. It takes a truly metaphysical strength to accept this.”
“A strength that Sebastian does not possess?”
“You’re touching on a sensitive point. The grown-up Sebastian you have met is actually still the boy that you saw in that photo. Like all boys, he longs for a world in which one can be both a pirate and a bookworm.”
“What do you mean?”
Oskar watches as Schilf pours himself more tea and pushes the bottle of rum across the table.
“Sebastian loves his life,” Oskar says, “but he still wishes he had not made a certain decision many years ago. Back then he leapt over a wall to save himself.”
“What’s behind the wall?”
“C’est moi,” Oskar says. “And physics.”
“A tragedy of classical proportions.” Schilf blows at the steam rising from his cup.
“Irony doesn’t suit you.”
“I meant that seriously.”