…HAMBURG…
In the closing deep-purple light of the day, Anselm turned the corner and saw the Audi parked across the narrow street from his front gate. He registered someone in the driver’s seat and the jangle of alarm went through him, tightened the muscles of his face, his scalp, retracted his testicles.
He kept walking, feeling his heart drumming, the tightness in his chest. Not twice, not in a quiet street, not in a peaceful country. It wouldn’t happen to him again. To him, no. Not here, not to him. No.
Just one person in the car, a man, there was another car further down, a BMW, empty.
The driver of the Audi got out. Not a man, a woman in a raincoat, shoulder-length hair, rimless glasses she was taking off.
‘John Anselm?’
He didn’t answer, eyes going to the BMW, back to her car.
‘Alex Koenig,’ she said. ‘I’ve been writing to you.’ She closed the car door, opened it again, slammed it, came around the front. ‘Damn door,’ she said. ‘It’s a new car. I was about to drive off.’
A shudder passed through him, an aftershock. He remembered the letters. Doctor Alex Koenig from Hamburg University had written to him twice asking for a meeting. He had not replied, thrown the letters away. People wanted to ask him questions about Beirut and he didn’t want to answer them.
‘I thought you were a man,’ he said.
‘A man?’
‘Your first name.’
She smiled, a big mouth, too big for her face. ‘That’s a problem? If I were a man?’
‘No,’ said Anselm. ‘The problem at the moment is how you got this address.’
‘David Riccardi gave it to me.’
‘He shouldn’t have done that,’ Anselm said. ‘You stalk people, is that what you do?’
She had a long face and a long nose and she had assumed a chastised look, eyelids at half-mast, a sinner in a third-rate Italian religious painting. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to give you that impression.’
‘Well, goodbye,’ Anselm said.
‘I’d really like to talk to you.’
‘No. There’s nothing I want to talk about.’
‘I’d appreciate it very much,’ she said quietly, head on one side.
He was going to say no again, but for some reason-drink, loneliness, perversity-he turned, unbalanced by liquor, and held the gate open for her.
In the house, standing in the empty panelled hall, taking off her raincoat, she looked around and said, ‘This is impressive.’
‘I’m glad you’re impressed.’ He led the way into the sitting room, put on lights. He rarely used the large room, with its doors onto the terrace. He lived in the kitchen and the upstairs study. ‘A drink? I’m drinking whisky.’
‘Thank you. With water, please.’
He poured the drinks in the kitchen, gave himself three fingers. When he returned with the tray, she was looking at the family photographs hung between the deep windows. She was tall, almost his height, carried herself upright.
‘How many generations in this picture?’ she said, turning her head to him.
Anselm didn’t need to look. He knew the photograph. ‘A few,’ he said, sitting down. He was already regretting letting her in, offering the drink. What had come over him? He didn’t want to answer questions, didn’t want her prying. ‘What can I do for you?’
She sat opposite him, in the ornately carved wooden chair. ‘As I said in the letters…’ ‘I didn’t read your letters. Unsolicited mail. How did you know where to send them? Riccardi?’
‘No. I only met him a few days ago. I asked the news agency to forward the letters.’
‘Kind of them.’
He hadn’t worked for the agency since before Beirut, hadn’t spoken to anyone there in a long time, five or six years, had never received anything in the mail from them. How would the agency know his address?
‘Why would they do that?’ he said.
She shifted in her chair, recrossed her legs, long legs. She was wearing grey flannels and low-heeled shoes. ‘I’m a psychiatrist. I told them I was doing research.’
‘That’s a good reason is it?’ He drank half his whisky and couldn’t taste it, wished he’d made it stronger, the bad sign. ‘Psychiatrist. Is that a special licence to invade people’s privacy?’
Alex Koenig smiled, shrugged. ‘I spoke to a man, I told him I was researching post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by hostages and that I very much wanted to talk to you. It was just a request. I would write to you. You could say no.’
‘I didn’t respond. That’s no.’
‘Well, I thought they hadn’t forwarded the letters.’
‘So you extracted my address from Riccardi.’
She laughed, not a confident laugh. ‘I have to say I didn’t do that. He offered the address, he said he’d ring you.’
‘Well I have to say I don’t have any disorder so you’re wasting your time.’
She nodded. ‘As you know, the symptoms can take a long time…’
‘When it happens, I’ll let you know. Until then there’s nothing I can tell you.’
They sat in silence. Anselm felt another bad sign, the urge to disconcert, didn’t care and looked at her breasts, looked into her eyes, looked down again. She was wearing a white shirt, fresh, well ironed, creases down the arms.
Alex Koenig looked down at herself, looked up at him.
‘They’re not very big,’ said Anselm. ‘Size means everything to tit men.’
He could see her slow inhalation, the slow expulsion.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘my body aside, my research is into the relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and the life history and personality of victims.’
Anselm felt the dangerous light-headedness coming over him, the sense of trembling inside, knew he should end this encounter. He drained his glass, went to the kitchen and half filled it, no water, came back and sat down. The light from the table lamp lit one side of her face, emphasised her nose, the fullness of her lips.
‘Life history? That’s what you’re interested in?’
‘Yes.’
‘And personality?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got those. Both. Two out of three. Missing only the disorder.’
Silence.
‘Would you like to see my scrapbook? Stories from foreign wars?
Pictures of dead people? Mutilated bodies?’
‘If you’d like to show it to me,’ she said.
‘The shrink answer. If you’d like to. What would you like, Frau Koenig? It that Frau? Frau Doctor Koenig?’
‘Alex is fine.’
‘Alex is too informal for me, Doctor.’ He felt himself speeding up. ‘I think we need to keep a professional German distance here. Are you German? You don’t look German. Some kind of Auslander, perhaps? A member of a lesser race? That’s not quite an Aryan nose, not that I mind it, of course.’
‘My father is Austrian.’
Anselm drank, a swig. ‘Austrian? Of course. A psychiatrist, where else would your father be? The land of Freud, Jung and Adler. Adler never quite made it did he? A lesser light. I can’t quite remember where Adler went wrong. You’d know, wouldn’t you? Sorry, that might offend. Not an Adlerian are you, Doctor?’
‘No.’
‘Right. What about Jung? A Jungian. He was a big prick, wasn’t he? Saw this huge one as a child as I remember it. This massive phallus. In a dream. Is that right, Doctor Professor?’
‘I’m not a Jungian.’
Anselm couldn’t stop himself. He leaned forward. ‘Dream about massive phalluses too, do you? Monsters? Huge pricks with men attached?’
‘I’m not an analyst.’ Her smile was tight.
‘No? You’d be into drugs then. Terrific. I’m with you. The best approach is drugs. Just give the crazies drugs. For fuck’s sake, they’re deranged, shoot them full of drugs, that’ll keep the nuts quiet.’
Alex Koenig hadn’t taken her eyes off him.
‘Unfortunately I didn’t keep a scrapbook,’ said Anselm. ‘And I don’t remember much about my illustrious career. That’s got nothing to do with post-traumatic stress. That’s the result of being struck on the head with a rifle butt. But I do remember that trouble spots are all the same. Only the colours of the people change. Outside. Inside they’re all the same colours. Red and pink and white. The intestines, they’re a sort of blue, purply blue, the colour of baby birds, seen baby birds? Only they’re wet and slimy, like big worms. Big earthworms or the worms in swordfish. People worms.’
He sat back and smiled at her. ‘Well, so much for my life history. That leaves personality, doesn’t it? Is that in the ordinary meaning? Or is it persona we’re talking about? The mask, the actor’s mask? Your Jung was keen on that, wasn’t he? Stupid phallic fart that he was.’
He waited. The way she was looking at him, her silence, her neutrality, brought back the American military psychiatrist. ‘What kind of shrink are you?’ he said. ‘Are you a couch-type? Plenty of couches in this house. We could talk on a couch, how’s that? Both on it. Prone and supine. Which would you be?’
There was a long silence. Then Alex Koenig stood up, eyes on his, glass held in both hands, licked her lower lip, a slither of pink tongue. ‘I like both,’ she said. ‘I like to alternate. I like to fuck and be fucked. But you wouldn’t be much good either way, Herr Anselm. Your prick’s useless. Even if you wanted to fuck me, you couldn’t. You’re not a performer. You’re impotent.’
He sat in the armchair and heard the heavy front door close behind her. He stayed there, head back, massaging the fingers that wouldn’t work, and after a time he fell asleep, waking beyond midnight, stumbling to his cold unmade bed in the room where his grandfather had died.