wasn’t able to forgive him,” Laila said. “She probably didn’t even try. Everything had to disappear—everything. Papers went into the fireplace, clothes to the dump, she even smashed his big coffee mug on the kitchen floor. And the fireplace was lit for several days in a row, the flames dancing in angry, all-forgetting joy. That, I remember.”
Father.
“That’s true. He often said he would die in a fire, just unaware that he’d done so already. Then he tried to paint instead of writing, but he himself realized it was pointless. In reality, he wasn’t good at anything; maybe not even at writing. Maybe he never even existed.”
Mother.
“We loved the Villa, probably even more than each other. But while my love was mixed with awe—every door there opened up into a netherworld, from which I myself, in a mysterious and actually inexplicable way, had come—then Mother’s love was split almost cleanly in half with rage. When we didn’t have the servants anymore, she would still polish the floors just as frequently, still plaster every crack in the ceiling on her own right away, and would dust every last porcelain figurine in each and every room. Over and over. And she cooked a three-course lunch every day, an hour later on Sundays. It was a war.”
Father.
“We couldn’t settle down anywhere. He wasn’t the one sucking life-juices from the earth, but rather the earth from him.”
Mother.
“Everything had to stay the way it was before. That’s what killed her in the end.”
“Inevitably, at some point in every person’s life comes the moment when he has to count up the promises he definitely intends to keep before he goes,” Brother said. “For me, you’ve always been one of those.”
“At first, my hands would grow weak when I wound up holding some long-familiar item from the Villa. I wondered—how could I put a price tag on a clock that stood on the cupboard and measured my time when I was still a child? How can I set my parents’ five-o’clock-teacups on a table in the shop window when all of the guests peering at them through the glass will still stay thirsty? But now, when I happen to come across an item stolen from my youth, I greet it like an old globetrotting friend who has decided to briefly look me up between his dusty travels to hear how I’m doing, too.”
When he stopped by the antique store the next evening, Brother had a chance to gaze upon the Villa’s silver spoons with his own eyes. Laila was pleased that he had been able to get some rest even on the narrow spare bed in the kitchen, since now, in the daylight, his cheeks no longer looked hollowed and the shadows under his eyes had disappeared.
“All people do here is flirt during the most lucrative opening hours; we’re running a business here, by the way,” grumbled the goateed antiquarian, dusting a heavy swan four times larger than life (that no one would ever buy, anyway). In fact, his claim was completely false, because other than during the town’s annual fair, only ten or so people would stumble into the dark and somewhat musty shop each week, at best. Not counting the pharmacist, who would occasionally visit to play chess in the afternoons, and the wiser patients who knew to bring their prescriptions there on such occasions. They, however, never bought anything from the goateed antiquarian.
“You know, then maybe I’ll take this painting,” Brother said, pointing to a small depiction of a somewhat frightened curly-haired woman with a chubby baby sitting on her lap and holding, for some reason, a spindle in its one hand while expertly inspecting a large cross held in its other.
“That’s pretty pricy, though,” the goateed antiquarian said with a smile. “The work of an old master from the sixteenth century.”
“Whoever sold it to you pulled a fast one,” Brother said. “The painting’s original is on display in Prado and is about two-and-a-half times larger. I always go to see it when I happen to be in the area. But I’d be glad to have something to remind me of those moments every morning when I wake up. What’s more, it might be true that I once knew the man who painted that copy.”
From his pocket he removed a roll of bills bound by a rubber band, and counted out onto the counter a stack that well exceeded the antiquarian’s expectations. At that same moment, a large-weighted clock living its own secret life on the wall struck noon; a clock, which certainly ran when it was maintained, but the hands of which had been snapped off by time.
“This should be more than enough,” Brother said. “Please have it brought to the Castle Hotel.”
“Does that mean you won’t be staying at my place anymore?” Laila asked in surprise.
“I plan on staying in town for a little longer now, and I don’t want to be a bother,” Brother said. “But I’ll come by tonight if that’s alright.”
He nodded to the goateed antiquarian and walked out, his long coat fluttering behind him.
“That’s just like my brother,” Laila said, and blushed like a schoolgirl given a flower.
The notary was the first to stir. His letter, sealed in an almost starched snow-white envelope and marked with his large initials, was delivered to Brother while he was in his hotel room watching an old Western about a nameless gun-slinging hero, who had been hired by the men of a small town to defend it against robbers being released from prison. The hero had just been promised a free hand in the town to do as he pleased as compensation, and one of his first acts was to appoint the dwarf barber’s assistant as both the new sheriff and mayor.
“I was asked to wait for a reply,” the courier said at the door.
Brother had already seen the film once before and knew what happened next.
“Tell him I’m coming,” he said.
“And so, you say,” the notary continued, gracefully holding the ornate handle of a heavy teacup, through which his finger didn’t fit, “that is, you claim, that the point of your visit is not to dispute your sister’s rights to have acted exclusively as inheritor of your parents’ estate, and naturally proceeding from that also not to appeal for the annulment of the amendments in ownership that transpired as a result of legal acts executed on the basis of mandates signed by your sister?”
“I already said that I came to visit her.”
“Because—I hope that as a reasonable individual you understand me in this—if you ever should, by chance, happen to develop a similar intention, which wouldn’t surprise me in the least, by the way, because it would be natural that you require the utmost clarity in these matters, meaning, if you should ever decide to undertake something along those lines, then I would simply like to tell you—not that I might be trying to somehow hint at anything, certainly not that—but I would simply like to say that firstly, you should, in that case, be prepared to prove any of your claims on the basis of significantly more documentation, you see, because as long as you’re simply a brother who is simply visiting his sister, then it’s, so to say, your personal matter—you do understand what I mean—but if you decide to be a brother who wants to dispute your sister’s signature to certain documents, then the matter becomes, so to say, public—you do
