insisting on waiting in some discomfort for the arrival of female paramedics. That Dirk also mentioned in his piece.
What I didn’t like was his pathetic attempt to add further human interest to his report. He implied that Herr Lessinger had died of a broken heart, felled by the enormity of the Bookshop’s impending closure. The old man had in truth passed away three days before in a clinic on the other side of town. His demise followed months of illness and he was sad only that he would not be able to visit his grand-children in Florida. Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger was otherwise sanguine with regard to the inevitable outcome of the affliction he preferred to call consumption.
I quite enjoyed the fact that Dirk had used my snarky reference to the fact that the shelves at the far end of the Bookshop housing all the bodice ripper, vampire and zombie titles (genres I had scrupulously avoided even when I had belonged to the target age group) had survived the explosion and the conflagration that ensued unscathed.
Two
TUESDAY 29 MAY 2012
The funeral was more interesting than I had anticipated. This was partly due to the fact that I used public transport instead of my skateboard. I had misread the tram timetable and arrived at the Nordfriedhof cemetery more than a half hour too early. Seated on the low wall surrounding a nineteenth century grave, in the shade of Gabriel’s huge outstretched wings, I smoked a spliff in funereal tranquillity. And so it was that later…
A Whiter Shade Of Pale.
(Procol Harum, it had been my Dad’s all-time favourite song!) And so it was that later I was super-alert to the sudden atmosphere of contempt, hurt and undisguised hostility when Vera and Agnes at last met.
Neither, Herr Lessinger had admitted to me, should know of the other’s existence. Philanderer he might have been, but the old man had never revealed the surnames of his lady-friends. Both were somewhere in their mid to late sixties, well-situated widows, their sexual appetites almost undiminished, each convinced that the aged bookseller was hers alone. I recall Vera described as insatiable although Agnes was praised as the more inventive.
Such frank, revelatory and intimate conversations with Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger had been few and far between. They often coincided with the days when I wore a dress or a skirt instead of my customary ultra-skinny jeans to work. The late unlamented and officious Elsa Brundt (as the Bookshop’s moral guardian) spoke to Herr Lessinger quite often of a suspicion she harboured. According to her, from time to time I wore a dress or skirt without the requisite underwear. The old man protested earnestly that such unseemly temerity from young Frau Lange was quite unthinkable.
Sure.
When the mourners assembled for the non-denominational service I confirmed that I was both the youngest person present and the best dressed. Vera, Agnes and others of advanced years had in their wardrobes ensembles which they wore with increasing frequency for funerals. My black knitted cotton dress from Comme des Garçons was more often worn for clubbing nights, bloused over a belt to be very short indeed. But unbelted it fell almost to my knees. My hat was a black straw trilby. I had bought three, the other two chrome yellow and cherry red respectively, for twenty euro at a market in Ibiza. My black flat-heeled ankle boots (I also owned them in neon green and silver) were more or less okay, I thought. Yes, I have the habit of buying in threes and I alternate between gleeful bargain hunting and self-indulgent extravagance. Anyway, in the chapel at least I was not on the receiving end of the kind of tight-lipped frowns which had been Elsa Brundt’s specialty.
It took me a moment to identify the man whose glance (no, repeated furtive glances during the pastor’s anodyne eulogy) could be deemed interested. Or at least curious.
Rudiger Reiß is in his late thirties, looks fit and has an upright posture. He’s taller than me and I am quite tall. I had seen the man in charge of all the Munich branches of Manduvel just once, at the beginning of the year. He had announced then in glib management-speak to the assembled staff that the branch on Trinity Place was to be abandoned by the concern. His timing, we had all agreed, sucked. It had been the Monday following the weekend which had been lengthened by the Epiphany holiday on the Friday. On the twelfth day of Christmas he had probably rehearsed.
Twelve drummers drumming.
Drumming us out of our jobs. Then as now Reiß had worn a smart black suit and looked a bit like the aloof duty manager of an expensive hotel. And on Saturday he had turned up, too. I had seen him in earnest discussion with someone from the gasworks emergency crew.
“You seem to be the only one here today from the Bookshop,” Reiß said, next to me in the graveyard. We laid flowers on the spot where in due course the ashes of Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger would be interred. I mumbled something about the others nursing their wounds. I wondered if he noticed that my floral tribute was one of the largest. In fact it had been ordered by my Aunt Ursel and the card was in her name as well as mine.
If we are being precise Ursel Lange is, in fact, my very elderly great-aunt. She is strict but very generous. The latter quality explains how it is that I can live much more comfortably than if I had to make do with the pittance paid to a trainee Buchhandelskauffrau. Aunt Ursel sets great store by qualifications. Her expectation is that my framed certificate will go on the wall of the small but still profitable bookshop, Brunnenbach Bücher, in the middle of the little Swiss town of Weinfelden. This is an enterprise which has been in our family’s hands for almost a century. I am supposed to take it over eventually.
“But for his illness, he would have been there to the very end, I suppose.”
I nodded. He would have been in the Bookshop where he could well have died. I reckoned that Elsa Brundt had speedily installed herself in the cubby-hole which passed for Herr Lessinger’s office in the chaos of the antiquarian section which had born the worst of the explosion.
Rudiger Reiß looked more worried than sad.
“You don’t plan to stay with us at Manduvel, Frau Lange?”
I chattered on about Weinfelden and Aunt Ursel and Brunnenbach Bücher (feigning enthusiasm for the promised legacy) as we processed down the paths of the Nordfriedhof. We made for the street where on the opposite side there was an Italian pizzeria. It was supposed to be quite a lively place in the evenings but during the hours when burials took place it was happy to welcome thirsty people dressed in black. Ludwig-Viktor Lessinger had with typical attention to detail arranged for a sum of money to be deposited with the manager. It was enough in fact to ensure the alcoholic stupefaction of the few following Vera who strode ahead, possibly much in need of a schnapps. Agnes marched with similar energy about ten metres behind her erstwhile rival. Then came Rudiger and I and a handful of others.
He still looked worried.
“Are you in trouble with the gasworks people? Negligence resulting in death? Proceedings of some kind?”
“You are very direct, Frau Lange!”
“Call me Thea. Herr Lessinger used my full name, Theodora. You may not, however, call me Dora. And, yes, I am very direct.”
I had the feeling that my straightforwardness came as something of a relief.
“To be quite frank, Thea, it wasn’t a gas accident. It was an incendiary device, a bomb if you like, so positioned that the antiquarian section would be devastated. It is a matter for the police now. The only trouble I am in now arises from my inability to deliver the antiquarian collection to our Austrian associate.”
“For a laughable price!”
“I have heard that Herr Lessinger was of that opinion.”
Then he said something which almost caused me to gasp. Reiß would have noticed were he not concentrating on the fast traffic which makes crossing Ungererstraße a fraught undertaking.
“Three quite intriguing books could have survived, you know. But Lessinger stipulated that they should be placed