'What?'
De Gier smiled encouragingly.
'A ripped fog in the early morning. I saw that this morning, above the river, when I drove into town. Lovely, but you can't hold on to it. I understand what you are saying, Grijpstra. What a beautiful place this cafe' is. Just look at that paneling, it's rosewood and well joined. Look how Zhaver contrasts against that background of mirrored bottles. Study Kiran, lying on sunlit boards. If I were smoking now, I wouldn't have this aVareness. Nicotine narrows the potential of imaginative reception by slowing the blood flow in the brain. It limits the capacity of the senses. I'm close to the essence of creation. I see that everything is glorious indeed. Too glorious in a way, I don't think I can stand it.'
'Hold it.'
'I will see what I can do for you, Grijpstra. Please tell me how you intend to find that corpse.'
'Right. The corpse is close, under the road bricks. But where exactly? I've thought of a method to determine its location. We must have Fortune followed. He will be attracted to the spot where he buried his wife, for marriage creates a link, strengthened in his case by crime. We can't follow him, for he knows us, but he doesn't know Cardozo. Listen carefully while I go into details and tell me what you think.'
'No ' de Gier said a few minutes later and smiled over Grijpstra's shoulder at the expanse of the Brewers- canal, stretched quietly in the heavy yellow light of the late afternoon.
'I'll do it anyway.'
'You won't,' de Gier said, 'but how did you ever think of it? How wonderful.'
Grijpstra inhaled deeply. De Gier cut the adjutant's protest with a loving wave of his arm.
'Not now, Grijpstra, I want to see it again.' His eyes rested on the canal's surface while he saw the phantoms raised by Grijpstra. First of all there goes the suspect Fortune, wandering in solitude, a prey to his own bad conscience and his self-inflicted demons. His muffled curses interchange with gnashing of his teeth. At a safe distance follows a detective. He is Cardozo, constable first class, a member of the murder brigade, a small figure, untidy and long haired, blending with the city. He carries a bundle of red flags. Everytime the suspect's behavior changes, whenever Fortune curses or gnashes louder, Cardozo remembers where the change occurred and inserts a flag between the bricks. The flags are small but bright of color and are seen by the laborer who follows the detective. The laborer drives a yellow machine, grumbling on wide crunching tracks, the machine carries a blade, and the blade digs holes. But each hole is always empty.
'Each hole is always empty.'
'But where could the corpse be?'
'Each hole is always empty, and how will you defend your decision when you are asked to explain the holes?'
'I do have serious suspicions,' Grijpstra said sadly.
'You do not. You have a bizarre construction, resting on what isn't there. You have negatives and you're adding them. No contents of a house, no lady, no life in a dog. Added negatives do not make a positive. You have a no head on a hearsay teddy bear. You have an insufficiency, adjutant, you have a nothing obscured by shapes.'
'What can I serve the gentlemen?' Beelema asked. 'You're just sitting. You aren't ordering. It's dinnertime. Tell you what? I invite you to come to the sandwich shop with me because my kitchen is closed because Titania is crying upstairs.'
'No, no,' Grijpstra said. 'Can't you send for some food? It's nice here, why leave?'
'Yes,' Beelema said, 'what will it be?'
'A roll with warm meat, another with chopped steak, another with ox sausage and another with two meatrolls.'
'Yes,' Beelema said, 'and the sergeant?'
'A roll with meat salad, another with crab salad, another with lobster salad, and another with two meat- rolls.'
'That'll be four meatrolls,' Grijpstra said worriedly, 'two for him and two for me, that makes four. Not two, not one for him and one for me, but two each, that's four, but only with two rolls, one for him and one for me. Can you remember that?'
'Four each?' Beelema asked. 'Isn't that a lot? He doesn't smoke anymore and should be careful and you're heavy already. It isn't my concern, of course. I'll get eight, or sixteen, but…'
'Two each,' Grijpstra said.
'Let Mr. Beelema go,' de Gier said, 'he understood.'
Beelema returned. Zhaver had laid the table. Beelema joined his guests and observed them while they ate.
'I'm proud of you,' Beelema said when they were done. 'You didn't mess about. Where do we go from here?'
Grijpstra turned slowly. He observed the crowd at the bar. The South American low-cut lady admonished the mustachioed South American gentlemen. Two groups of glass-in-hand locals flanked the foreign element
'Introduce me to somebody who knows the Fortunes, a reliable somebody. Can you do that?'
'Yes,' Beelema said. He walked over to the locals and studied them one by one. He made his choice. 'Mr. Hyme,' Beelema whispered, 'do you see the two men sitting at the corner table? They are police officers. They want to meet you. Please go and talk to them.'
10
'Sir,' Hyme said and contemplated the foam on his beer. 'Sir, your question fascinates me. I asked myself the same question, last night, to be precise, when Beelema told me that Rea had gone and left an empty apartment. A most interesting question. Where is Rea Fortune? Or may we formulate it differently? Is Rea Fortune? The where could be immaterial, and if we should pursue that side, we might find ourselves in the Hereafter of parapsychology or the Bardo of Tibetan migrants. I believe that I understand the direction of your reasoning, and I agree in anticipation. Especially since I met with Fortune, just now in fact, on my way here. The man's mood is peculiar, victoriously nervous it seemed to me. And the tale he told me does not fit the past, if that past were decent, which we doubt, do we not? He told me that he is now eager to sell his business, while only a week ago the possibility drove him into a frenzy.'
Grijpstra smiled cheerfully. Hyme smiled back. De Gier glanced out of the window. Hyme, dressed like a British sportsman of the early twenties and affecting the whiny tone of voice that is respectable in some provinces but antagonizes the denizens of the capital, irritated the sergeant. The view the window offered irritated him too. He had seen the elegant hairy cyclist before, he had heard the clanging pedal before. He forced himself to listen to Hyme and to neither kick nor hit Grijpstra. It was a pity that Grijpstra had so little intelligence, de Gier thought. He found a burned match in the ashtray, inserted it into his mouth, and began to chew slowly and rhythmically.
'Victoriously nervous,' repeated Grijpstra, 'exactly sir. The very impression the suspect made on me, when we interrogated him earlier today.'
'As if he had succeeded in the undertaking of an important project,' Hyme continued, 'as if he had surmounted certain risks. Do you know what I thought when I reflected on our recent meeting?' ('No?' Grijpstra asked eagerly.) 'I thought of the possibility that Frits Fortune is engaged in the Great Clearing. He rids himself of everything. First of all of his home, then of his work. Isn't that what life consists of? Home and work? Aren't both stress situations? Isn't home the worst of the two? Shouldn't home come first? If our lives contain too much hardness, if suffering outbalances pleasure, will we not destroy first the one and then the other?'
'Right!' Grijpstra shouted. 'A type of suicide?' Grijpstra asked meekly.
'And reincarnation. But not in the hereafter, no, here. That was the impression Fortune gave me. Everything goes but he stays here. Remarkable, don't you think?'
Why does he wear a tie? the sergeant thought. That man is an asshole. Why does he wear a blazer? Why is he so happy? De Gier's thoughts colored the atmosphere, weighed it down, but Hyme pushed ahead. Perhaps he noticed the threat, for he spoke both louder and faster, and his hands, which had grabbed at Grijpstra's cigar smoke
