“Calm down… and then? What happened next? Did they manage to kiss?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. That was the moment of impact. Everything was smashed to pieces in the gully. The light was blinding. Devastating.”
2
Each time the researcher left the taxi driver, he had a feeling that something had been left unsaid. He could hardly wait to return, to try again. Next time, he thought, he would make no mistake. The driver held the answer. He would have to give up all his philosophical speculations about two sorts of love, the old one, dating back millions of years, which operated within the tribe, and the new rebellious one that had broken out of that prison. Let others deal with the rivalry or alliance between these two sorts of love and the hopes each of them nourished of treacherously supplanting the other, when the time came. This was a mystery involving the old devices of the world, which from one millennium to the next, in semi-darkness, had shaped the savagery of tigers and the soul’s lusts, pity, shame or hours of peace. He had nothing to do with these things, or with ballads, ancient or modern. His business was with the driver, who perhaps imagined that he had got off scot-free and was out of his clutches. And he had every right to think this as long as the researcher had still not put the fatal question: was he an accessory to murder or not?
That question will come. It will come, my precious. As soon as he had settled various side issues. Then he could forget all those ballads. Or so he imagined, until a moment came when he was compelled to ask himself why he was so fixated on them.
He could easily imagine the horseman with his bride behind him, and the conversation between the two.
“Where are we going? To… the prison?”
“Of course to the prison, where else?”
“But what will I do there? And does the law allow this?”
“I never thought of that.”
“But why? What did you agree to? Why did they let you go?
What did you promise them?”
Drumming hooves filled the silence. Then words again.
“Why do you have to go back? Let’s run away, both of us.
We are free.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? What’s holding you back?”
Silence again, and the hooves raising dust.
“Can’t we rest a bit?”
“No, we’re late. This is my third day of leave. The prison gate closes at nightfall.”
“What is that river there? It looks like the one where we first met by the bridge, remember? Why has it turned against us?”
“We have to hurry. Hold on to me tight.”
“But what are those sheep? Those black oxen? Why all this traffic?”
“We’ve got to hurry. Hold tight.”
“Ago, what are you doing? You’re strangling me…”
“Perhaps we’ll arrive before the gate closes. Airports are strict nowadays. Boarding gates are closing earlier all the time.”
With half-closed eyes the researcher shook his head. He could not believe this. A hunch told him that, before his next meeting with the driver, he should visit Lulu Blumb.
Unlike the first time, at these later meetings with the researcher, Lulu Blumb was extremely careful to advance the suspicion that Besfort Y. was a murderer only at a late stage in the interview and after the utmost deliberation.
This was evidently why Lulu Blumb, before coming to the essential point of her story, which later featured most prominently in the conclusion to the inquiry, carefully explained various profound and subtle issues of the kind that she was better placed to know than anyone else. For instance, apologising to the researcher for putting it bluntly, she said with a good deal of pride that many men may have slept with Rovena, but none of them could claim to know the intimate parts of her body better than she did. The researcher expected a comparison with the piano, which she indeed mentioned in passing, before dwelling on the idea that her fingers had transposed the music of Mozart and Ravel, against whose background they had met and later made love, from the keyboard of the nightclub piano to her body. With a sardonic smile, she added that she did not believe that the tedious and often barbarous statements of the Council of Europe about military intervention, terrorism, bombing and other horrors, which were Besfort’s stock in trade, went very well with lovemaking.
Always along the same lines, and evidently wishing to postpone as long as possible the moment when she pointed the finger of blame, Liza Blumberg dispelled some of the mystery surrounding an aspect of the crime that had baffled many. She was as much tortured by pangs of conscience at not having rescued Rovena from Besfort as by grief at her death.
She kept saying this was the first time she had ever been defeated by a man.
During endless days and nights, Lulu Blumb vainly racked her brains. How had Besfort kept the woman he loved so enchained? How had he so terrorised her? How had he made her so sick?
Usually men behaved like complete fools when they discovered that their rival was a woman. They sniggered or felt relieved that it was not another man that had ousted them. Some were devoured by curiosity, and others hoped to beguile their rival. Later, when they knew the truth, they would beat their heads with their fists and curse the day they had grinned like apes instead of howling in dismay.
Lulu Blumb had waited impatiently for that moment. She waited until it dawned on her that it would never come. Besfort would never grow jealous of her. She would be jealous of him. This was the difference between them, which handed the victory to him instead of to her.
The two rivals knew about each other, but in different ways. When Rovena once mentioned a new experience with Besfort, the pianist had cut her off, saying she did not want to know. Rovena retorted that Besfort was quite the opposite and wanted to know everything. At this moment Lulu Blumb went pale.
“What do you mean, the opposite?”
It was too late for Rovena to put together a soothing reply… The opposite meant that not only did he not stand in the way of her seeing Lulu, but he even liked to hear… meaning he enjoyed… and he even encouraged her, whenever she quarrelled with Lulu, to make up.
“You slut,” Liza shouted. Rovena, she said, had used their love to excite that bastard’s lust. She had marketed it like some porno film. Like an idiot, she had allowed herself to be used like a doll. Do you understand what I mean? Do you understand German? Do you know what “doll” means? A dummy! That’s how he used you. Like those pimps from your country who put their fiancees on the street. You’ve read the news -papers and heard the radio. But you didn’t stop there. You dragged me into this game. And his lordship, this generous scumbag, gives his permission for you to come to me. In other words, he throws me charity in the shape of yourself. Because that’s what you’ve been reduced to, a dummy. And that’s what I’ve become, a beggar at the church door.
Rovena listened in bewilderment to Liza’s sobbing, which was so much harder to endure than her rage. Besfort wasn’t jealous, because she counted for nothing. To his Balkan male mentality, she, Lulu Blumb, was an object of ridicule, a plaything, a soap bubble, a distraction for Rovena while she remained enslaved to him. She apologised for the word “slut”, and all the other things. She admitted that she could not compete with that monster. She accepted defeat. Perhaps it would be better if they did not meet any more. She had nothing more to say except: God help you!
Rovena wept too. She also begged forgiveness. She told Lulu that she shouldn’t take all these things so much to heart. In the end, he was her husband.
“Husband?” she wailed through her sobs. This was the first she had heard of it… In fact, it was true… They were keeping it secret… At least it was true for Rovena… “But you were ready to come with me to that little Greek church in the middle of the Ionian Sea to be married…”
