Strindberg's Star (21 page)

“There are so many modern systems these days,” Eberlein said.

Don looked over toward the doors, but the soft voice lured him back.

“Today, what used to be a simple lock can consist of a device that scans the iris of an eye or senses the lines in a fingerprint. In the case of fingers in particular, some of these systems can be so advanced that they can even tell whether the skin is warm or cold, in order to determine whether the finger is on a living person.”

In vain, Don tried to feel the sensation of the Xanax.

“But as with everything, there is always room for cleverly executed forgeries.”

Eberlein patted him on the thigh.

“A person who wanted to make a copy of your fingerprints could, for example, brush the porcelain cup you used in this library with finely pulverized coal. Then one could lift the lines of the prints from the cup with something as simple as transparent tape. With the help of a needle, one could then etch the lines from the tape into a thimble-size mold, which one could then fill with a thin layer of gelatin. When the gelatin had solidified, it would conduct electricity and warmth, just like your own skin, and one would have a false fingertip that could deceive any fingerprint reader at all.”

“I have always been partial to the mechanical,” said Don.

“There is quite a range of conceivable uses,” Eberlein continued. “One would be to press a few copies of your fingertips against the broken bottle that’s presumably lying somewhere in the underbrush down by Erik Hall’s lake. One would then, of course, be obligated to turn the bottle over to the Swedish police right away, because such an important piece of evidence would be downright illegal to keep for oneself. A murder weapon with the perpetrator’s fingerprints—something like that must be considered conclusive evidence.”

Don felt himself nodding.

“But of course, it is a work-intensive procedure,” Eberlein sighed.

He let go of Don’s thigh with his hand and leaned back in his chair.

“Yes, it sounds complicated,” said Don.

“Perhaps one wouldn’t even be able to find that broken bottle that killed poor Erik Hall. In that case, it would be unnecessary work, to say the least.”

Don nodded again.

“Perhaps there wouldn’t even be a reason for us to look. Perhaps you and your attorney could come up with a suitable suggestion that would make everything I said superfluous.” The light disappeared as Don slowly closed his eyes. Then he tried to get his thoughts moving
by rubbing the side of his nose, and at last he said,
“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.”
Of what one does not know, one cannot speak.

Eberlein smiled.

“You can think about it until tomorrow morning.”

D
on could hear the Toad moving over by the double doors, and then the sound of a light knock. When he opened his eyes, he saw that both of the men from Säpo had lingered outside with Eva Strand. He hesitantly got up from his chair and sneaked a look at the clock; it was midnight.

“It will be somewhat confined and inadequate lodgings for the both of you, I’m afraid,” said Eberlein. “But you will have to be satisfied with what the house has to offer.”

Then Don felt the Toad’s hand on his back, and he found that he was slowly beginning to move out of the library, on his way to the winding spiral staircase.

T
hey had followed the Toad’s waddling back through the corridors on the lower floor. Via a dining room with a ceiling mural that depicted two eagles in flight against a white and blue sky, they had arrived in a grandiose kitchen. There the Toad had unlocked a door that led to the windowless pantry. After asking Eva and Don to step in, he had handed the keys to the thin-haired Säpo man.

Cupboard doors covered in gold-marbled wainscoting, linseed oil–stained shelves above a sink and basin. Bowls of whisks and ladles were mirrored in a gleaming zinc splash guard, and two heavy freezers were humming next to the gray-checked laminate slab of the counter. Behind a tinted glass door with a small lock, they could see a wine cellar with bottles resting in delicate metal racks.

The Toad had nodded toward them and in the direction of the two mattresses on the floor, and then there had been a rattle as the thin-haired man shut and locked the door.

At first Don had been able to hear people mumbling in Swedish out there, but soon the whispers had stopped. Perhaps the two Security Service policemen had fallen asleep, because it had gone from midnight to two thirty.

D
uring the hours in their stuffy cubbyhole, Don and Eva had time to turn Eberlein’s threat over and over. When Don told her about it, Eva hadn’t believed him at first. Then she had declared that of everything that had happened since they’d left the Falun police station, perhaps this bit about falsified fingerprints was the least surprising. Don had said something about the German tradition of combining confusion with ruthless methods, and along with mounting fatigue, a sleep-drunkenness had crept up on them, and soon half-stifled laughter could be heard from the pantry.

B
ut now Eva stood up from the plastic-covered mattress and walked up to the long counter.

She opened a few cupboards at random and finally found a large drinking glass, which she filled with water. Then she seemed to change her mind and poured it out in the sink. Don followed her eyes over to the glass door and the dim rows of bottles in the wine cellar.

“Your research was in history,” said Eva, “about Nazi symbols, wasn’t it?”

Don nodded, but she had already turned away and started to search through the drawers under the counter.

“So what do they usually say is the symbolic meaning of a knife?”

“Of a knife … ?”

He searched his memory and found that at least some scraps were still left.

“A knife usually denotes victims and revenge. Death.”

Took a deep breath and continued with eyes closed: “To cut with a knife can symbolize releasing something, like in Buddhism, a sign for the liberation of the self, of cutting away all ignorance and pride.”

He heard Eva clattering around in the drawers.

“For Christians the knife symbolizes martyrdom. Bartholomew the Apostle, for example, was skinned alive by a knife.

“For the Nazis, knives were connected with the swastika. In the emblem of their predecessor, the Thule Society, the swastika was
intersected by a dagger. Men in the SS received double-edged daggers when they were admitted, and they were to protect them with their lives. They had some bizarre idea that one became noble this way, in a direct line of descent from the knights of the Teutonic Order.”

There was a clatter and then silence, but Don had just begun.

“In Old Norse mythology, the goddess Hel had a bed that was called sickbed, a dish called hunger, and they said her knife was called …”

“Thanks, that’s enough,” said Eva.

“They said her knife was called famine.”

When Don looked up, he saw that Eva had turned toward him. In her hand she held a small, sharp table knife.

“But what I wanted to know …” said Eva, walking over to the door into the wine cellar. “What I wanted know was whether a knife could be regarded as a …”

She stuck the blade into the lock.

“As a key.”

There was a pop as the thin catch in the glass door broke.

“That will be something to write about in
The Lawyer
,” said Don.

“Well, there are limits to what a person can tolerate,” said Eva. She wedged the knife into the molding, got the door open, and disappeared into the darkness.

D
on had almost managed to doze off when he heard her heels approaching again from inside the wine cellar. The glass door swung open, and Eva carefully placed a dusty bottle on the counter. Black, with a rounded shape, and on its label Don could read “Graham’s Vintage Port.”

“A fine collection the ambassador has put together,” said Eva. “This one is from 1948.”

Then she took two shimmering green glasses from the cupboard above the counter and placed them next to the port wine bottle. Don followed her movements from the mattress.

“One of the truly great …” she continued, as she pulled off the strip of the seal. “One of the truly great vintages, isn’t it?”

This was a question that was way beyond Don’s knowledge.

“Well, you can pretend you’re not interested …”

Eva pulled out the cork.

“But I’m telling you that the forty-eight is exquisite. This port wine could have aged another fifty years without harm. It is completely timeless.”

She poured and handed one glass to Don. He could tell that she was paying careful attention to the expression on his face as he brought it to his mouth.

“This is how Lisbon tasted just after the war,” said Eva.

Don thought it was like drinking syrup as he took his first sip. A strong and almost incomprehensibly concentrated taste of coffee and caramel.

“It was an unusually cold July that year,” Eva continued, after having let the port wine roll around her mouth. “An oppressive, dry warmth came in the beginning of August, and the grapes matured quickly. If I remember correctly, the heat was so intense that the harvest had to be moved, but most of it still dried up. It tasted very sweet even then. The forty-eight was already a classic by the early sixties, and it was compared with the 1942, which was also a very good year.”

She let her tongue slide over her sugary lips.

“For port wine, maybe,” said Don, putting down the glass. “But you certainly know a lot about vintages.”

“Well, I’ve been taking a couple of classes,” she replied, with a slight blush. “It’s a hobby that eases the conversation with clients sometimes.”

“A couple of classes …” chuckled Don.

Then he awkwardly got up from the mattress and made an attempt to shake the stiffness out of his arms and legs. In the splash guard, it was like looking at the mechanical movements of a scarecrow. He could also see Eva’s reflection there; she was standing with her hip
against the counter. Under the speckled herringbone pattern of her jacket, her brown blouse was hanging askew, and a gray strand of her light upswept hair had come loose and was hanging down by her eye.

“See for yourself what you can find,” she said, nodding toward the forced glass door.

“There must be something else we can do,” said Don, irritated.

But she just shrugged her shoulders.

I
t was cold inside the wine cellar, and raw air streamed toward him when he entered the corridor between the protruding necks of bottles. Built-in lights gave a dull illumination, and a gold corkscrew and two crystal glasses stood on a wine cask. Alongside the cask, a staircase ran down to something that seemed to be a lower floor. Don threw a glance over his shoulder and could discern Eva’s waiting figure through the tinted glass. But then he decided to go down there anyway.

The lower part of the wine cellar had walls of coarse-pounded brick. Along them ran rough planks, closely spaced, which were filled with rows of grimy bottles. A few plain lightbulbs hung from the high ceiling on cables of twisted fiber.

Don wondered how the attorney had been able to find what she was looking for so quickly, but supposed, without being any great connoisseur of wine, that the best must be kept farthest in. So when he had come to the end of the wine cellar, he stood on tiptoe and took out a bottle from the middle of the top row. It looked ordinary, and it was marked with the year 1999. The next was better, a Bourgogne from 1972, and the third seemed very promising, from 1959.

“If someone saved something for so long, it must be good,” Don mumbled to himself.

Then he looked back up at the empty place on the shelf, where the bottles had lain.

T
he attorney was still leaning against the counter when Don came back up to the pantry. She looked more tired now than when he had left her, and she didn’t seem to care about the port wine bottle anymore.

“This story must come to an end,” she said.

“There’s something down there that you have to see,” said Don.

H
e led her back into the wine cellar, closed the glass door after them, and made sure that it closed properly. After they had walked down the narrow corridor, past the cask with the crystal glasses, they came down to the lower wine cellar. On the floor, standing in a line, were fifty or so bottles, which Don had removed from the top shelf.

“Well, you’re not skimping,” said Eva Strand.

Don pointed to a wooden box eighteen inches high, which he had emptied so he wouldn’t have to stand on tiptoe as he picked through the bottles. Eva took a few steps forward, looked questioningly at him, and then climbed up on the box. With her fingers on the top shelf, she peered into the opening that had been formed when the bottles were removed.

“You see it, right?” Don asked.

Eva nodded. Then she stretched an arm in to feel around.

“I can’t reach,” she said.

“It looks like it’s made of glass,” he said.

“I can’t …”

After one last try, Eva gave up, pulled out her arm, and looked down at him.

“So what were you planning to do now?” she asked, still keeping her balance with her fingers on the top shelf.

“Help me remove the rest of the bottles,” said Don.

Eva looked at him skeptically, but finally she handed down a Bordeaux. Then another, and another, and when the top shelf was empty, together they lifted away the rough board that the bottles had lain on and began the work of emptying the next row.

Soon the far end of the wine cellar was covered in bottles, and when they moved away yet another board, they no longer needed the wooden box to reach.

Now they could see it, what had earlier been concealed by the shelves up by the ceiling: a small cellar window, its blue and red mosaic glass streaked with dust and dirt.

Don kicked the wooden box so it broke, and then, with difficulty, he pried off a plank. Two rusty nails were still sticking out of it, and he held it in his hand like a weapon.

“And if they hear?” said Eva.