Parallel Stories: A Novel Read online

  As if his fate had been to have this hopelessness added to another hopeless case. For this he could thank the coincidence that he had not been relieved on his shift. And as if the approaching Christmas holiday served only as a means to deepen the complications. Yet in fact, in this new case, Kienast needed only to deal with two primitive matters: to determine the unknown person’s identity, and to exclude the possibility that the death was a suicide. He could see that the case would be simple, yet that he wouldn’t be able to solve it to his own satisfaction. This boy would somehow mess him up. His other hopeless case was more exciting; he had been at it for more than two months—a patricide in which the wife took the blame for the child who had been regularly having intercourse with the father.

  After his night shifts, Kienast often felt dejection followed by a justified anxiety. His natural laziness sought this sort of excuse or explanation. He was like a large canine that loves softness, warmth, and comfort.

  It took a long time to identify the corpse, especially since no one came looking for it, not even after the holidays.

  Before it was put on ice, it went through only the first, most necessary coroner’s examination. The forensic technicians searched through the corpse’s belongings. They found nothing on the body or in the clothing to indicate violence. Most likely a heart attack had finished him off on that park bench.

  Kienast noted, however, that no article of the corpse’s clothes had labels. In cases where personal identification is difficult, these labels can be very helpful. One should look for them almost automatically. Overcoats and jackets are to be turned inside out; the labels are there, sewn into the lining. In shirts and sweaters, they are on the collars, in pants on the inside of the belt band. In socks and underwear they may be embroidered or woven; in cheaper merchandise they are printed in bright colors. Often these labels are of more use than the so-called bertillonage, those eleven items of physical measurement and characteristics that must be recorded to make a positive identification but that are useless for anything else and find themselves at the bottom of desk drawers or in unused databases. This dead man did not wear cheap clothing. Dr. Kienast, examining the third or fourth item, with gloved hands lifted them carefully out of their marked plastic bags. When he found no trace of any labels, in his surprise he hissed involuntarily.

  He was alone in the large room; his lonely hissing echoed within the empty tiled walls.

  Well, all right, it’s possible that a person finds these labels offensively colorful, or they irritate the skin, or one simply does not feel like being labeled and one removes them. It’s also acceptable to get rid of them on one’s shirt and pullover because, let’s say, they irritate one’s neck; but why in hell would anyone peel them off the inside of the pants’ waistband, where they can’t be seen or felt. A mania; but what could be the sense or significance of such a mania. As if he were angry at the living person whose corpse was lying before him.

  What maniac would get rid of every possible mark on his clothing that might be used for identification. Other people do not even notice labels, or they like them because they are proud of the brands they wear. His mind automatically supplied the answer: persecution mania, compulsive self-concealment, justified or unjustified anxiety, a desire to leave no traces behind. He gazed at the corpse, he gazed at its belongings.

  At the shockingly small underpants, made of translucent, shiny, almost glittering material, where he found a large stain of sperm. Whatever else, he had been a man who liked the color blue; everything he wore was blue—light blue or dark blue.

  A man who only in the blue of his shirt allowed some white stripes.

  There was too much blue here, much too much.

  Must have been a boring man.

  He must have been a man who used this boring stylishness as a disguise but in fact was some kind of compulsive or a maniac. That’s characteristic of a fastidious man: while his passions rage within him, he maintains his self-respecting exterior; must have been an unbearable person. He found no labels on the diaphanous dark blue woolen socks either. The label had been cut off at the seam of the glittering silvery blue underpants, but a tiny sliver of it, frayed by frequent laundering, remained. The underpants: an exceptional piece. Hardcore fetishistic gentlemen wear such items. He glanced at the corpse and then with his naked eye measured the place of the substantial sperm stain on the unusual underpants. The result of prolonged erection, prolonged seepage or a minor emission. There will be something to look for on the pants too. He could almost see the sharp leather-cutting scissors with which the small label had been removed with a single snip.

  This man must have behaved most mysteriously and was probably prepared for the end at any hour.

  On his thin bony wrist, there was no visible sign to indicate he wore a watch; neither did he wear a ring. Still, the detective thought he’d been married. If unmarried, he would have been more daring in his passion and probably would have worn not this sort of brief but rather a jock strap of red or white satin under his conservatively tailored clothes. In his soft, black wallet they found a surprisingly large amount of money but no trace of personal identification. This also showed he was after quickly purchasable intercourse and that he managed to get it cheaper than expected. Finally, his black-laced low quarter shoes were items that revealed something if not of their owner then of themselves: Italian shoes of a most reliable brand. Such sturdy Italian shoes one can purchase only in London. And there was something else Dr. Kienast did not know what to do with: the bare body’s pungent smell. It was not an unpleasant odor, in fact rather pleasant. Something like an enticing female fragrance that somewhere, not so long ago, the detective had encountered close up or even enjoyed.

  Or he had been exposed to a waft of it and found it not repellent.

  Perhaps it reminded him of another fragrance, and that is why he thought it was familiar though he could not recall the original. He thought it must be a feminine fragrance because he found it sweeter and somewhat heavier than the deodorants, colognes, or aftershaves used by men, and it emanated not only from the corpse’s clothes and other belongings but also from his body.

  The body had at least another half hour before cooling off completely; its scent would live that long. Dr. Kienast felt a strong urge to sniff the entire body as a police dog would. Although he did not dare do it, in his professional eagerness he could not fend off the attraction of the dead body. He sniffed the air, he sensed the bitter smell of stale tobacco piercing the affected fragrance of the body. As if he were wary of such a perfume. In fact, he was amused by his temporary cowardice.

  No doubt about it, yellowish brown spots of discoloration were there on the corpse’s fingers, testifying to the habit of an inveterate smoker.

  Still, no cigarettes, lighter, or matches were found on the body. Under the bench, in a black leather case, they had found a bunch of keys.

  The body itself was clean and untouched. Untouched, that was the first word that came to mind when, still outside, they had first undressed the body for him and he in the beam of searchlights began to examine the carefully removed articles of clothing. This also made the body’s odor so surprising. The body laid out before him was that of a man who had probably been reluctant to touch anyone or anything. Not a rare thing among fetishists. They bow only to their strongest compulsions or most powerful attractions. They establish contact not with each other, not with the other person, but with symbolic objects touching the other’s body. In this sense, they truly and wholly deviate from ordinary urban egoists who, even in the presence of the other, pay attention exclusively to themselves.

  As he looked at the almost hairless, smooth, and well-proportioned corpse, it occurred to Kienast that this was a dry man. He had first come across concepts of bodily dryness or moistness when he had studied ancient investigating techniques for his dissertation, reading original texts on Greek healing methods. This manner of death was not appropriate to dry persons. According to Galen, death by heart attack is mo
st characteristic of damp or moist people.

  Nor could he dismiss the notion that this odor was not the man’s own, was not caused by a scent he had used, but was an odor that he had received during his last hours from another body and that clung to him.

  After a misstep, one always takes home a strange, unfit fragrance. Shower, soap, or thorough scrubbing notwithstanding, these strange fragrances, be they repulsive or sweet, are incredibly loyal.

  Sometimes, on the morrow, one feels that such a fragrance is as pervasive as if it had settled in the fine hairs of one’s nostrils, and one cannot but yield to the guilty attraction and return to the source of it. Dr. Kienast had married when very young and was divorced soon afterward because of his continued missteps. While in the presence of the corpse and aided by undoubtedly pleasant memories, he was daydreaming of the sweet occasions of making up, he was recalling the hoarse, intelligent woman whom no one suspected was conducting a clandestine, insane, passionate, and desperate struggle against her ugliness, who on her wide bathroom shelves, which she could lock, had amassed an unprecedented arsenal of perfumes, creams, facial ointments, bubble baths, lipsticks, and powders, even though by profession she was an evaluator of fragrances and should have been wise about using cosmetics moderately, should have known that she could not achieve much with their help. That woman could probably have told, she could probably have identified the heavy scent with its deep-seated acrid undertone, he thought, and from his pressing thoughts it followed that he should lift the dead man’s dark blue woolen pullover to his nose. Perhaps he could recognize the smell by himself.

  Perhaps that woman occurred to him only because he knew this smell from her body.

  He seemed to feel the tension in his tendons, the fine and disciplined trembling of his muscles.

  The body does not forget.

  This woman reached her climax gaping mutely, she screamed only seconds later, once past the peak of her pleasure, and even then she did it as if she had hoped to swallow it all back into herself. But no, he could hardly smell the perfume on the dark blue pullover; it smelled more strongly of tobacco smoke.

  The perfume’s scent issued only from the body.

  From the large room illuminated by fluorescent lights, two swing doors led to the corridor. Corpses were trundled in through one; through the other they were taken to the refrigerated room and from there to the official autopsy. The wings of one door kept flapping quietly because somewhere someone had left a window open.

  Dr. Kienast heard no steps in the corridor. While he listened, the telephone rang next to him on the desk; he started a little; the phone rang again but he didn’t pick it up.

  It wasn’t the first time that professional curiosity had swept him into a critical situation, and sometimes he had to cross the boundaries of his own good taste or even those of the law. If it had not been so, he probably could not have followed the thinking of criminals and would not have chosen this profession. He put down the pullover, picked up the blue-and-white-striped shirt and could tell with absolute certainty that the unknown man had not spent the last day of his life in this shirt and most probably not in this pullover, but had changed clothes in the afternoon or, he quickly corrected himself, in the early evening. These are rather simple matters. One could still smell the laundry detergent and the rinse on these articles, or even the deodorizer in the clothes closet. And his last hours the man must have spent in a place full of tobacco smoke, in an inn or bar, a cheap restaurant, a place unworthy of his social standing.

  The perfume was detectable only on the lower third of the shirt and on the underpants. On the latter, the quickly perishing sperm was also sensed as an odor. The telephone kept ringing, but otherwise no action was heard anywhere. He stepped up to the legs of the corpse and, as if begging the indulgence of a fellow human’s mortal remains for what he was about to do, he touched the man’s foot and leaned over his loins. That is when the telephone finally stopped ringing, and in the still existing draft one could hear again the wings of the swing door flapping. He closed his eyes, perhaps involuntarily, because he did not want to see the dead man’s genitals from so close up while he took a whiff of them. He was immediately assailed by the strong smell of the penis. Otherwise, everything was as he had expected it would be. This penis could have been involved only in oral intercourse, not in a vaginal or anal one; the secretion tests would provide exact details. The odorous perfume had been smeared on the thick rich pubic hair and on the graying thinner hair running in a wedge shape up on the abdomen; from there it permeated the air in the large room. He did not want to lose a moment. He heard steps approaching in the corridor and he wanted to check his observation before the coroner returned. There was no smell on the chest, around the armpits or behind the ears, the last questionable locations. And now he felt he had done everything that had to be done and found out what he wanted to find out: the perfume was not the dead man’s own but a freshly applied strange one that was later smeared over his body. The swing door’s wings flapped open just as he raised his head.

  As if he had been kissing the corpse.

  At the noise of the door he quickly turned around and said he had finished doing what he needed to do.

  Have you found anything encouraging, asked the coroner pleasantly.

  He was the Pathological Institute’s physician on duty, with whom the detective had a daily and very cordial relationship. That meant that they had their unavoidable smaller or larger frictions but, as they say, could live with them.

  I’ll leave that to you, Kienast replied politely, but I’d be very grateful, he added without the slightest trace of embarrassment, if you also smelled his stomach and pubic hair. There’s some kind of perfume, scented soap, who knows what.

  Maybe you’ll recognize it, he added.

  Sometimes, out of sheer self-defense, his colleagues pretended not to hear what Dr. Kienast said or requested. And not only those with whom he had rare contacts but also his immediate subordinates. Most of them used the informal address among themselves, yet they tried to keep Kienast, along with his obsession, at a safe distance. He was considered weird, a person who had to be allowed to have his way and be told to stop only if he was about to mix one up in some dark or unclean business. That’s what happened this time. Dr. Kienast waited for a while to see if the other man would do his bidding, but he did not. And not as if expressing disapproval, but as if he hadn’t even heard Kienast’s request.

  Typically, Dr. Kienast would be stunned and mumble to himself.

  He could not fathom why others were satisfied with so little of the obtainable knowledge, or what they did with their natural human interest or professional curiosity.

  When he had finished the requisite tests, the coroner declared that the death of the well-kempt, well-nourished unknown male, about fifty years old, most likely occurred a few minutes before being discovered by that early morning runner.

  Though possibly it happened a little later.

  What’s more, it might also be possible, Dr. Kienast added somewhat sarcastically, that the corpse is still alive.

  This man is a very recent corpse, replied the slightly insulted coroner, go on, look at him, please. He raised the lifeless hand, showed Kienast the fingernails, and then let the hand drop. And as if that had not been sufficient, he pressed his fingers into the corpse’s thigh muscles.

  It’s possible, he went on explaining, that he gave up the ghost during the ten minutes it took your men to get to the scene in your cars. If that runner had come across him earlier, or reported him earlier, or if you and your coppers hadn’t fussed around so much, the ambulance people might possibly have revived him.

  Dr. Kienast asked whether the body wasn’t in too good shape to have succumbed to a heart attack.

  The coroner laughed, relieved, and asked him to stop his stupidities, he was talking like an amateur.

  Oh, no, Dr. Kienast pleaded; he merely asked the question in such a silly way because he was wondering whether they should
be investigating in an entirely different direction.

  If he were fond of hairsplitting, replied the coroner, who did not quite see where Kienast was going with his strange reasoning, he would agree that, at first glance, the heart attack might not have been inevitable, but that is no basis for judgment.

  Let’s wait for the autopsy, he added after a brief silence.

  Doesn’t look like a used-up body, Dr. Kienast insisted.

  Look at his legs, his chest, didn’t have a belly, must have swum or played tennis or who knows what, but he exercised seriously. And we’d better take samples from his abdomen and loins, he added casually, there is a good-size sperm spot on his underpants, and please take a sample from his anus too.

  Who knows, the sperm may not be his. We should also know something more concrete about the mode of the intercourse. Judging by the look of his penis, he was not participating in a vaginal or anal pleasure.

  He was very sorry, replied the coroner impatiently, but to say anything more or anything else now would be sheer irresponsibility. He must have a more thorough examination. Of course, he would have the sperm looked at especially. He would probably receive Dr. Kienast’s wish list, as usual. As to the corpse’s legs and his exercises, he thought that in his younger days the man bicycled a lot.

  Why didn’t I think of that, the detective cried out in surprise.

  The swollen veins, of course, the man definitely did bicycle.

  And then everything continued on in the usual way.

  In those anxious days, by the way, many people died of apoplexy or heart failure unexpectedly, suddenly, but on all the others there were identifying documents.

  The weather changed all the time; now it was warm as if spring were coming; now the temperature dropped and it became bitter cold. Dry cold with some snowflakes. As if the weather wanted to contribute to the general upheaval.

  The corpse was wheeled out through the other door and pushed into its temporary place. Cooled somewhat, that is where it would wait for its autopsy and the legal permits for samples to be taken from it. There was a small spot on its neck. Someone must have hugged him from behind, surprising him, and clung to him with lips stuck to his neck so vehemently, perhaps even bit him, as to “kiss out” the skin, as Hungarians would say, causing a black-and-blue spot, a love bite or hickey. Someone who had not seen him for a long time. Neither the coroner nor Kienast spoke of this, though both knew that this mark had to be recorded immediately. They’d pour dental wax over it, the negative would be filled with dental plaster, thus gaining an imprint of a stranger’s lips or teeth, which might determine the outcome of a case, because it might be the culprit’s lips or the teeth of the last eyewitness.