The Book of Murder - By Guillermo Martinez & Sonia Soto Page 0,45
excited, and as she held out the flowers her childish voice rang out: “These are for you, Daddy.” Someone stretched out a hand to take the flowers and she ran back into the garden. The writer had somehow arranged it so that the scene was on a loop and the child ran towards and away from us endlessly, with the same bunch of flowers, the words sounding more eerie and sinister every time: These are for you,Daddy. I looked round and saw Kloster’s face, partially illuminated by the glare from the wall. He stood rigid, rapt as he watched, eyes fixed and stony like those of a dead man, with only a finger moving mechanically to press the button on the projector.
“How old was she here?” I asked. Really I just wanted it to stop, to escape from this crypt.
“Four,” said Kloster. “It’s my last image of her.”
He turned off the projector and switched on the light. We returned to the library and I felt as if I were re-emerging into fresh air.
“I spent the first few months after her death shut up in that room. I also started writing my novel in there. I was afraid of forgetting her.”
Once again we stood facing each other in the middle of the library. He watched me as I put on my coat, gathered up the printed sheets and slipped them back in the folder.
“You haven’t told me what you intend to do with this. Or do you still believe her rather than me?”
“From what you’ve said,” I replied hesitantly, “Luciana has no reason to fear any further misfortunes. The series of deaths, so close to her, must have been chance, a run of extremely bad luck. But doesn’t it strike you as unusual?”
“Not really. If you toss a coin in the air ten times it’s quite likely you’ll get heads or tails three or four times in a row. Luciana could have got tails several times in succession over the past few years. Misfortunes, like gifts, are not fairly distributed. And chance, in the long term, may be a superior way of meting out punishments. That is what Conrad believed: “It is not Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune—the ally of patient Time—that holds an even and scrupulous balance.” But isn’t it paradoxical that I should have to remind you that chance exists? Didn’t you write a novel called The Random Men? Weren’t you the fervent defender of Perec’s building and Calvino’s pack of cards? Weren’t you proud to oppose old–fashioned causality in fiction, the stale determinism of action-reaction? And now suddenly you come here in search of the First Cause, of Laplace’s demon, of an unambiguous explanation of the kind you so despised. You wrote an entire novel about chance, but you obviously never bothered to toss a coin in the air. You don’t know that chance has its forms and runs as well.”
I said nothing for a moment, holding Kloster’s contemptuous gaze. So not only had he read my unfortunate article but he’d remembered it word for word. Wasn’t he showing me, despite himself, unwittingly, his bitter, vindictive nature? But then I too remembered every word of bad reviews and could have repeated a few verbatim. And if it didn’t make me a criminal, how could I use it against Kloster? I felt I had to say something.
“True, I find classical causality in literature boring, but I can distinguish between my literary views and reality. And I expect that if four of my closest relatives died I too would find it alarming and would start looking for other explanations.”
“Can you really? Distinguish between your fiction and reality, I mean. For good or ill, that was what I found hardest when I began my novel. “Fiction competes with life,” said Henry James, and it’s true. But if fiction is life, if fiction creates life, it can also create death. I was a corpse after I buried Pauli. And though a corpse can’t aspire to create life, it can still create death.”
“What do you mean? That there are deaths in your novel too?”
“There is nothing but deaths.”
“But aren’t you worried that it’ll start to seem…unbelievable?” I felt silly, and rather contemptible: Kloster’s commitment to verisimilitude in his novels was something I myself had made fun of.
“You don’t understand. You can’t. It’s enough that I believe it. It’s not for publication. It’s not intended to convince anyone. Let’s just say it’s a personal declaration of faith.”