‘Niko, sweetie,’ Eve calls out. ‘You know you say you love me.’
‘I may at some point have mentioned something to that effect, yes.’
‘Because there’s something I’d really, really like. Some scent.’
At the Felsnadel Hotel, the meal is in its terminal stages, with bottles of Cognac, Sambuca, Jägermeister and other spirits circulating. Leonardo Venturi, his tiny hands cradling a balloon glass of Bisquit Interlude Reserve brandy, is explaining his personal philosophy to Magali Le Meur. ‘We are the descendants of the grail knights,’ he says, glaring at her breasts through his monocle. ‘New men, beyond good and evil.’
‘And new women, perhaps?’
‘When I say men, I mean women too, naturally.’
‘Naturally.’
In the entrance hall, Birgit issues Villanelle and the other serving women with floor-length black cloaks and long-handled combustible torches. Villanelle has asked once again to be allowed to go to the toilet, and has once again been refused. Sympathetic glances from her fellow staff members suggest that they’ve been victims of the same obsessively controlling behaviour. Ordering them outside onto the snow-covered plateau in front of the hotel, Birgit positions the serving women in lines of six on either side of the helicopter landing pad. This has now been swept of snow and converted into a music stage, with speaker-towers to left and right. At the front of the stage is a microphone stand, at the rear a drum-kit bearing the Panzerdämmerung logo.
When the twelve women are in place, Birgit walks to each of them in turn and lights the wicks of their torches with an electronic gas lighter. ‘When the guests come out, lift the torches up in front of you, as high as you can,’ she orders them. ‘And on pain of dismissal, do not move.’
It’s piercingly cold, and Villanelle pulls her cloak around her. The burning oil in the torches sputters faintly in the frozen air. Ice particles swirl on the wind. Finally the guests saunter out of the hotel, warmly wrapped in coats and furs, and Villanelle raises her flaming torch in front of her. The guests arrange themselves on either side of the stage and then Linder appears, picked out by a spotlight, and marches to the microphone.
‘Friends,’ he begins, raising his hands to silence the applause. ‘Welcome to Felsnadel. I can’t tell you how inspiring it is to see you all here. In a minute the band are going to start playing, but before they do, I just want to say this. As a movement, we’re gathering speed. The dark European soul is awakening. We’re creating a new reality. And that’s in great part due to all of you. We’re winning supporters every day, and why? Because we’re fucking sexy.’
Pausing, Linder acknowledges the cheers of his guests.
‘What woman, and what sensible man, doesn’t fancy a bad-boy nationalist? Everyone wants to be us, but most people just don’t dare. And to all those sad liberal snowflakes out there, I say this. Watch out, bitches. If you’re not at the high table with us, tasting the glory, you’re on the menu.’
This time the whoops and cheers are deafening. As they finally die away Linder steps to one side of the stage and the three members of Panzerdämmerung enter from the other. As Klaus Lorenz slips his arm through the strap of a bass guitar, and Peter Lorenz takes his place behind the drums, Petra Voss walks to the microphone. She’s dressed in a white blouse, calf-length skirt and boots, and carrying a blood-red Fender Stratocaster guitar slung like an assault rifle.
She starts to sing, her fingers picking softly at the strings. The song is about loss, about forgotten rituals, extinguished flames and the death of tradition. Her voice hardens and her guitar-playing, underlined now by Klaus Lorenz’s bass, takes on a steely resonance. She doesn’t move or sway but just stands there, motionless except for the dance of her fingers. For a long moment she stares straight at Villanelle, expressionless.
Villanelle stares back, and then turns her attention to the guests, who stand rapt in the flickering torchlight. Max Linder is watching them too. His gaze scans the group dispassionately, noting their reactions to the spectacle that he has created for them.
On the drums, Peter Lorenz has been maintaining a ticking backbeat, but now he ramps up the pace. A recorded track of a political speech, ranting and incoherent, counterpoints Petra Voss’s edgy, insinuating guitar. The drums continue to build until all other sound is annihilated. It’s the sound of battalions marching through the night, of lands laid waste, and as it reaches a climax and stops dead, a starburst of spotlights pierces the darkness, illuminating the surrounding mountain peaks. It’s an awesome sight, ghostly and desolate in the ringing silence. The guests break into applause, and Villanelle, taking advantage of the diversion, lengthily and copiously pisses herself.
Eve and Niko doze through most of the TV show they’re watching in bed. Opening her eyes to discover the end-titles rolling, Eve reaches for the remote control. For several minutes she lies there in near-darkness, her thoughts vague, as Niko shifts beside her. Every time he moves he’s twitched into wakefulness by his fractured ankle, but eventually fatigue and codeine prevail, and he sleeps.
Claudio. Suppose she’d let him kiss her. How would it have gone from there?
The kiss itself would have been brief and efficient. A formal statement of his intention and of her acquiescence. He would have taken her somewhere in the palazzo, into some suggestively appointed chamber for which he always carried the key. There would be few words and no
