Woman in the Fifth

I put my head in my hands, and actually felt appalled at what had befallen my ex-wife. Yes, the ‘Let him have it ‘ comment did rankle. But I still feared for her now.

I signed off the computer and decided to hop a cab to the rue Linne. The traffic was light. We made it there in less than twenty minutes. I checked my watch: 4.58 p.m. I walked up and down outside her doorway for two minutes, then took in a deep steadying breath and punched in the code.

The door clicked open. I entered the building. I scanned the courtyard. Nothing different. But when I turned toward the concierge’s lodge I saw the man with whom I had scuffled yesterday. He was sitting in his chair and staring out at me. But he also seemed to be looking right through me. So I walked over to his window and tapped three times on it. No response from him. His face was blank — as if he was in some sort of catatonic state. I tapped again on the window. Nothing. I opened the door. I put my hand on his shoulder. His flesh was warm to the touch — but still no recognition that someone was now shaking him, trying to rouse him from his stupor. I shouted, ‘Can you hear me?’ His eyes remained frozen, his body immobile. I felt a chill run through me. I backed away from the lodge, spooked. Get out … get out now. But when I tried the main door in the courtyard, it was locked. I must have spent five minutes struggling to open it. You can’t open it, because you can’t leave. I looked for other ways out. There were none. I stared up the staircase leading to Margit’s apartment. You have no choice now. You have to go up there.

On the way up to her apartment, I tried knocking on every other door en route. Not one answer. Had I ever heard any neighbors before? Had I ever been cognizant of other life in this place? Had I … ?

As I approached her floor, her door opened. She stood there in her usual black lace nightgown, a sardonic smile on her lips.

‘What did I tell you about not coming here other than at our agreed time?’

Her voice was calm, quiet. Her smile grew. I approached her, saying nothing. I grabbed her and kissed her fully on the lips.

‘You taste real,’ I said.

‘Do I?’ she said, pulling me inside the apartment. She took my hand and stuck it between her legs. ‘And do I feel real?’

I pushed a finger inside her. She groaned.

‘It seems so,’ I said, putting my free hand through her hair and kissing her neck.

‘But there’s one big difference between us, Harry.’

‘What’s that?’

With one sudden movement, she pushed me off her. As I stumbled, I saw the flash of a cut-throat razor in her spare hand. It headed toward me, slicing me lightly across the hand.

‘Fuck,’ I screamed as blood began to pour from the wound.

‘The difference is …’

She took the razor and slashed her throat. I screamed again … but then stood there, dumbfounded, as nothing happened.

‘You get it, Harry?’ she asked.

Now she took the razor and sliced her left wrist, cutting deep into the skin. Again, not a single sign of injury.

‘The difference is: you bleed, and I don’t.’

Nineteen

‘SO WHAT DO you want to know?’ she asked.

‘Everything,’ I said.

‘Everything? ‘ she said after a sharp laugh. ‘As if that would explain—’

‘Are you dead?’

‘Have another drink, Harry.’

She pushed a bottle of Scotch toward me.

‘Fuck your Scotch,’ I said. ‘Are you dead?’

We were sitting on her sofa. It was a few minutes after her razor attack. My hand was now bandaged. She insisted on dressing the wound and wrapping it in gauze moments after cutting her own throat. I was in such shock — both from the pain of the sliced hand and her bloodless suicide — that I allowed her to lead me to the sofa and pour me a steadying whisky (I downed it in one go) and play nurse on the hand she had cut with such swift deftness.

‘How’s the pain?’ she asked, pouring me a second whisky and handing me the glass.

‘It hurts,’ I said, throwing back the whisky, and not thinking too much about how the alcohol would deaden the effects of the antibiotics I was taking.

‘I don’t think any of the tendons were damaged,’ she said, taking my hand and checking its mobility.

‘That’s wonderful news. Are you dead?’

She refilled my glass. I drank.

‘What did the police tell you?’ she asked.

‘That you slashed Dupre to death and left a note: For Judit and Zoltan. Is that true?’

‘It is.’

‘And then you fled to Hungary and hunted down Bodo and Lovas.’

‘That is correct.’

‘They also showed me Hungarian police reports. They said you mutilated both men before killing them.’

‘That is also correct.’

‘You cut off their fingers and gouged out their eyes?’

‘I didn’t gouge out Lovas’s eyes because I didn’t have enough time. But yes, I did cut off all their fingers and I did blind Bodo before cutting his throat—’

‘You’re insane.’

‘I was insane. Insane with grief. With rage. With an absolute need for revenge. I thought if I killed the men who killed the most important people in my life, somehow the fury that consumed me would cease.’

‘But you just didn’t kill them. You butchered them.’

‘That is also correct. I butchered them in a completely premeditated way … and with great malice aforethought. I was determined to make them pay for what they did to me.’

‘But to cut off their fingers?’

‘Dupre didn’t suffer that fate. I stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach and arms and made him look me in the face — so he could hear me tell him how he destroyed my life — before I plunged the knife into his heart and then cut his throat.’

‘And then you left a note and took a shower and left all your clothes behind.’

‘They did get very bloody during the attack. But yes, I had planned it all out. And yes, after administering the coup de grace I used his bathroom to shower. I left the note. I made myself some coffee, as I had some time to kill before the first train left at five twenty-three … funny how I can still remember all such exact details. I reached the Gare du Nord forty minutes later. I collected my bag and bought my ticket and boarded the train. I splurged on a first-class couchette — so I had a compartment to myself. I remember giving the porter my passport and a large tip and telling him I didn’t want to be woken up at the German or Austrian borders. Then I took off my clothes and got into the couchette and slept soundly for the next eight hours, by which time we were somewhere near Stuttgart —’

‘You slept soundly after murdering a man?’

‘I had been up all night. I was tired. And the adrenalin rush … well, it did exhaust me.’

‘Did you feel better after killing Dupre?’

‘A crazed numbness best describes it. Ever since I had decided on this course of action, I had been operating like an automaton. You do this, you do that, you go here, you go there. It was all carefully