“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.”
“But in your novel,” I insisted, “do you uphold the hypothesis of chance?”
“No, I don’t. What I’m saying is that you should. Or at least consider it. But I suppose there could be other explanations, for a writer with enough imagination. Even a policeman like Ramoneda was able to conceive of another possibility.”
“Please! The only thing an Argentinian policeman can come up with is that the victim is also the prime suspect. Why would Luciana do such a thing?”
“For the most obvious reason: guilt. She knows she’s guilty and she’s giving herself the punishment she thinks she deserves. Because her father, a religious fanatic, instilled in her a belief in the whip, in self-flagellation. Because she’s crazy, yes, but to an extent that neither you nor I can imagine.”
Kloster said it without emphasis, with the calm coldness of a chess player watching a game, analysing possible moves. I said nothing. Again he pointed at the plastic folder under my arm.
“So what are you going to do with that? You still haven’t told me.”
“I’ll keep it in a drawer for now,” I said, “and I’ll wait: as long as there are no more tails in the sequence that’s where they’ll stay.”
“That’s rather unfair,” said Kloster, as if trying to talk round a difficult child. “Unless I’m much mistaken, Luciana’s grandmother was already very elderly ten years ago. She was in a care home. And if she hasn’t died yet, it could happen at any time.”
I didn’t detect any hint of a threat either in his expression or in his voice. He simply seemed to be making a logical objection.
“A death from natural causes obviously wouldn’t count,” I said.
“But don’t you see? Luciana wouldn’t consider anything a natural death. Even if her grandmother died in her sleep she’d claim I climbed down the chimney and smothered her with a pillow. She thinks I poison cups of coffee and spread toxic fungi and free prison inmates, so nothing will stop her.”
“But I can judge for myself and I know the difference between a sequence of four tails and one of seven.”
“The number seven,” said Kloster, as if he were suddenly fed up. “You shouldn’t make the same mistake. Apparently Luciana’s father didn’t teach her about biblical symbolism. The Hebrew root of the word ‘seven’ is related to the completeness and perfection of cycles. That’s the way the number seven is used in the Old Testament. When God warns those who want to kill Cain, he’s not referring to a literal number, to a numerical ratio, but to vengeance that is complete and perfect.”
“Don’t you think the death of four loved ones is sufficiently complete vengeance?”
Kloster looked at me as if we were arm wrestling and he acknowledged my effort but wasn’t prepared to give an inch.
“I can only know my own pain,” he said. “Isn’t that, basically, the problem with punishment? A dilemma, as Wittgenstein would say, of private language. I don’t know how many deaths are equivalent to the death of a daughter. And anyway it’s not something that depends on me, or something I can stop. As I said, I’m simply writing a novel. But I see I haven’t convinced you, and it’s getting late. I’ve got an appointment: a girl from a secondary school is coming to interview me for her school paper…”
Kloster stopped, possibly because he’d seen the look of surprise and alarm on my face. I hadn’t mentioned Luciana’s fears for her sister in the pages I’d given him to read. I stood, frozen, waiting for him to say more. But he simply motioned peremptorily towards the stairs, indicating that I should leave at last. As I descended the stairs I turned: he was still standing at the top, as if he wanted to make sure I really was going.
“You said on the phone that you had a question for me,” I remembered suddenly. “But you haven’t asked me anything.”
Kloster made a gesture, almost like a wave.
“Don’t worry. You’ve already told me what I wanted to know.”