The Jealousy Man and Other Stories Read online

  ‘And Helena…does she know anything?’

  Franz Schmid shook his head. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked. ‘You give me a rope and tie yourself to the other end and tell me that if I kill you no one will know anything.’

  ‘Let me ask you instead, Franz, isn’t it terrible to have to bear the weight of this alone?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘If you kill me now, you’ll still be alone. With not just a murder committed in blind rage but a cold-blooded murder. Is that what you want?’

  ‘You leave me with no choice, Nikos.’

  ‘A man always has a choice.’

  ‘When it comes to his own life maybe. But now I have a family to consider. I love them, they love me, and I am willing to make any sacrifice for them. Peace in my soul. Your life. Do you really think that’s so strange?’

  I fell. I caught a glimpse of the end of the rope as it disappeared into Franz’s hand and knew it was all over. But then the harness tightened around my thighs and back again and I swayed lightly on the elasticated rope.

  ‘Not strange in any way,’ I said. My pulse dropped, the worst was over, I was no longer so afraid to die. ‘Because that’s what I’ve come here to offer you. Peace in your soul.’

  ‘Not possible.’

  ‘I know I can’t give you perfect peace. After all, you killed your brother. But I can offer you peace from the fear of being exposed, of having to look over your shoulder the whole time.’

  He gave a quick laugh. ‘Because now it’s all over, and I’m about to be arrested?’

  ‘You’re not going to be arrested. At least not by me.’

  Franz Schmid leaned backwards. With the end of the rope now in his hand it was just a question of how long he could hold on. That was OK. I was prepared for it to end this way. It was one of the only two ways out that were acceptable to me.

  ‘And why aren’t you going to arrest me?’ asked Franz.

  ‘Because I want the same thing in return.’

  ‘The same thing?’

  ‘Peace in my soul. It means I can’t arrest you without doing the same thing to myself.’

  I saw the sinews and the veins move beneath the skin of the back of his hand. His neck muscles tensed, and he breathed more heavily. I understood I only had seconds left. Seconds, a sentence or two to tell the story of the day that had shaped the rest of my life.

  * * *

  —

  ‘So what plans have you got for the summer?’ I asked Trevor as I raised the Thermos cup to my mouth.

  Trevor, Monique and I were sitting on separate stones and facing each other. Behind us was a wall some twenty metres high, and before us a softly undulating landscape of meadows. Most of it was uncultivated, here and there we saw cows. On clear days like today, from the top of the wall, you could see the smoke from the factory chimneys hovering over Sheffield. We had finished climbing, the sun was already low in the sky, and we were just taking a short break for food before heading back. The hot cup scorched my raw fingertips, and the cup felt slippery because I had just rubbed Elizabeth Arden’s Eight Hour Cream into my fingers – that’s a ladies’ cosmetic first produced in the 1930s, but as I and hundreds of other climbers had discovered, it was much better for rebuilding new skin than any patented climbers’ cream.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Trevor answered.

  It was difficult to get him talking today. Same with Monique. On the drive from Oxford, and also while we were climbing it was me – the one with the broken heart – who did the talking. Joked. Kept the spirits up. Of course I saw them exchanging looks that said who’s going to tell him, you or me? But I adroitly avoided giving them a suitable opening. I had filled any silences in the car with meaningless chitchat that would almost certainly have sounded frenetic had it not been on the subject of climbing, where all talk sounds frenetic. This was to be a one-day trip, since Monique needed the rest of the weekend to prepare for her finals, so perhaps they intended to wait until we were almost home so that they wouldn’t have to spend hours in the car with me after dropping the bombshell. On the other hand, they were probably desperate to get it over with, confess their sins, swear it would never happen again, accept my disappointment, even, perhaps, my tears. But after that my forgiveness too, my magnanimous promise that yes, we could pretend it had never happened and continue as before. Yes, and perhaps grow even closer now that we had a foretaste of what it was we risked losing: each other.

  We climbed trad-routes only the whole day, meaning we had to fasten our own bolts in places the mountain allowed it. Naturally it’s a much riskier way of climbing than using permanent bolts, since a wedge you’ve just pushed into a crack can easily be jerked out if you fall. But strangely enough, given my disturbed state of mind, I had climbed well. And very relaxed, almost oblivious to danger the harder it became to fix good, secure supports. Things seemed the other way round for Trevor and Monique, Trevor especially. Suddenly he wanted bolts knocked in everywhere, even on the easier passages, which meant the climbing took an irritatingly long time.

  ‘What about your summer plans?’ asked Trevor and took a bite of his sandwich.

  ‘Work a bit for my father in Athens,’ I said. ‘Earn enough to visit Monique in France and finally get to say hello to her family.’

  I smiled at Monique, who returned my smile awkwardly. She has probably forgotten, though it was only three months ago that the two of us had pored over the map, picking out vineyards and small peaks and pleasurably going over a few practical details as though we were planning an expedition to the Himalayas.

  ‘We’d better tell you,’ said Trevor in a low voice, staring down at the ground.

  I felt myself grow cold, felt my heart sink in my chest.

  ‘I’m planning a trip to France too in the summer.’ Trevor went on chewing.

  What the hell did he mean? Weren’t they going to tell me what had happened? About this slip-up that was behind them now, Monique who had been feeling so alone because I had been neglecting her, Trevor who had succumbed to a moment of weakness, no excuses, of course, but the remorse they felt, the promise that, of course, it would never happen again – wasn’t any of this going to come out? Trevor was going to France. Did the two of them…were the two of them, were they going to follow the route Monique and I had planned?

  I looked at Monique, but her gaze too was fixed to the ground. It dawned on me. It dawned on me that I had been blind. But I had been blind because the two of them had put my eyes out. Something big and evil and black surged up inside me. It couldn’t be stopped, it was as though my stomach twisted and a stinking, yellow-green spew was trying to force its way out. There was no way out; mouth, nose, ears, the sockets of my eyes, they were all sewn shut. So the spew filled my head, driving out every sensible thought, surging and bursting inside me.

  I could see Trevor preparing for it. For the crux. He took a deep breath, his new broad shoulders and his back swelled up. That white back I had seen through the window. He opened his mouth.

  ‘You know what?’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’d like to climb one route more before we go.’

  Trevor and Monique exchanged confused glances.

  ‘I…’ Monique began.

  ‘It shouldn’t take long,’ I said. ‘Only Exodus.’

  ‘Why?’ said Monique. ‘You’ve already climbed it today.’

  ‘Because I want to climb free solo,’ I said.

  The two of them stared at me. The silence was so complete we could follow the conversation going on between the climber and his anchor a hundred metres further along the rock face. I pulled on my climbing shoes.

  ‘Don’t mess about,’ said Trevor with a strained laugh.

  I saw from Monique’s look that she knew I wasn’t messing about.

  I wiped my slippery, greasy fingertips dry against my climbing trousers, stood up and walked over to the face.
Exodus was a route we knew inside out. We’d climbed it dozens of times with ropes. It was easy all the way up to a marked crux – the most difficult point – near the end where you need to commit fully, abandon your balance and throw your left hand out towards a little handhold that slopes slightly downwards, meaning that the only thing that stops you falling is the friction on the rock. And because it’s about friction, we could see from the ground that the handhold was white with the resin of climbers who had dipped their hands in their bags directly before the move so their skin would be as dry as possible.

  If you were left hanging your only option was to move your right hand to a large handhold, get your feet up on the ledge and climb the remaining few, easy metres. Once at the top there was a simple descent without ropes down a slope on the rear of the crag.

  ‘Nikos…’ Monique said, but I had already started climbing.

  Ten seconds later I was high up the crag. I heard the conversation further along the face suddenly stop and knew they had realised I was climbing free solo. That means climbing without rope, with no security of any kind. I heard one of them curse quietly. But on I climbed. On up past the point where it might have been possible for me to think better of it and climb down again. Because it was fantastic. The rock. Death. It was better than all the whisky in the world, it really did make me lock everything else out, forget everything else. For the first time since I sat in that tree and saw Trevor and Monique fucking I was free of pain. I was now so high that if I made a single mistake, if I slipped, became exhausted or a handhold broke, I wouldn’t just fall and hurt myself. I would die. I have heard that those who climb free solo programme themselves not to think about death, because if you do all your muscles will stiffen, your supply of oxygen will be blocked, the lactic acid will build up and you will fall. It was the other way round for me that day. The more I thought about death, the easier the climbing seemed to be.

  I was at the crux. All I had to do was let my body drop to the left and arrest the fall with my left hand on that single, small handhold. I stopped. Not because I hesitated, but to enjoy the moment. Enjoy their fear.

  I stood on my left big toe, let my right foot dangle under me as a counterbalance, leaned over to the left. Heard a little scream from Monique and felt a delicious hollowness in my body as I tipped off balance, out of control and abandoned myself to gravity. I threw out my left hand. Found the ledge and gripped hard. The fall was arrested almost before it had begun. I moved my right hand to the firm, big hold and got my feet up on the ledge. I was safe. And felt almost immediately a strange disappointment. The two other climbers, two elderly Englishmen, had made their way over to Trevor and Monique, and now that they saw I was no longer in danger of falling they began to give vocal expression to their anger. I heard them say the usual things, how free soloing should be banned, that climbing is about risk-management, not about challenging death, that people such as me set a bad example to the younger climbers. I heard Monique defending me, saying there were no young climbers here today, if they didn’t mind her saying so. Trevor said nothing.

  Standing steady now, as a way of resting and to get the lactic acid out of my muscles for the final few metres, I used a familiar climber’s technique, alternately turning the right hip and the left in towards the rock face against which I was standing, holding on with my left and then right hand as I did so. As the left hip brushed against the rock, I felt something prick me in the thigh. It was the tube of Elizabeth Arden cream I had in my trouser pocket.

  In later years I have tried to reconstruct it, tried to spool back through my own mind, but it’s impossible. All I can conclude is that we are to a quite surprising degree incapable of recalling what we think, that, as is the case with dreams, it slips away, and that we work out what we must have thought from what we in actual, historical fact did do, nothing else.

  And what I did that Friday afternoon in the Peak District in England, standing firm and steady and holding on to the rock with my right hand, was stick my left hand into my trouser pocket. As I was standing with my left side and hip twisted towards the rock face, my left hand and pocket were hidden from view to those standing below on the ground, moreover they were preoccupied with discussing the ethical dilemmas associated with suicide climbing. With my hand in my pocket I unscrewed the cap, squeezed the tube, held the thick, fatty cream between two fingers. Continuing to hold on with my right hand I placed my left hand back on that handhold at the crux, seemingly attempting to adjust slightly the position of my feet and smeared off the white cream. Established that it was impossible to distinguish it from the white resin that had been there before. I wiped my hand dry on the inside of my thigh where I knew that the smears of cream would not be seen if I stood with my legs together. I then climbed the last few steps to the summit.

  By the time I had descended the rear of the crag and walked round to the front the two other climbers had gone. I could see them walking along the path through the fields. Clouds were moving in from the west.

  ‘You idiot,’ hissed Monique, who stood there with her rucksack on her back ready to leave.

  ‘I love you too,’ I said and took off my shoes. ‘Your turn, Trevor.’

  He stared at me in disbelief.

  In fiction great narrative power is often vested in a single look. In a literary sense the convention helps the writer tell his story well, and sometimes to great effect. But since I am not, as I have said, a specialist in the interpretation of body language, or more sensitive to atmosphere than others, I can only conclude, based on what he did, that he knew. He knew that I knew. And that this would be his way of doing penance; to challenge death, in the same way as I had just done. That this was now the only way he could show his respect for me and have any hope of my forgiveness.

  ‘You won’t make your idiotic action any less idiotic by persuading him to do something just as idiotic!’ hissed Monique. There were tears in her eyes. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hear the rest of her tirade. I stared at those tears and wondered if they were for me. For us. Or were they for the moral trap she and Trevor had fallen into, which was so contrary to everything she thought she stood for? Or for the knife that was about to be plunged into me, and which seemed to call for more courage than they possessed? But after a while I stopped thinking about that too.

  And when Monique realised I was no longer listening and that I was no longer looking at her but at something behind and now above her she turned, and saw Trevor on his way up the crag. She screamed. But Trevor was beyond the point at which he could regret it and turn back. Beyond the point at which I could regret it.

  No, that’s not true. I could have warned him. Tried to get him to find another way, look for other handholds that would get him past the crux. I could have. Did I consider it? I don’t remember. I know I thought it, but did I think it then, or later? What hoops has my memory jumped through, in order to if not exonerate me then at least offer me extenuating circumstances? Again, I don’t know. And which pain would be the greater? The one I would have to live with if Trevor had travelled to France that summer and maybe spent the rest of his life with Monique? Or the one I was fated to live with – to lose both of them anyway? And would any of those pains have been worse than to have lived with Monique, lived a lie, lived in denial, knowing that our marriage was false and based not on mutual love but on mutual guilt? That its foundation stone was the gravestone of the man she had loved more than me?

  I could have warned him but I didn’t.

  Because back then I would have chosen the same as I would today – to live a life of lies, denial and guilt with her. And had I known there and then that such a thing was impossible I would have wished that it were me who had fallen. But I didn’t. I had to live on. Until today.

  I remember little of the rest of that day. Meaning that it is, of course, archived somewhere, but in a drawer I never opened.

  What I do remember is something from the drive back to
Oxford. It’s night, and several hours since Trevor’s body has been brought down, since Monique and I have given our statements to the police and tried to explain to Trevor’s distraught mother while his father’s sobs of pain cut through the air.

  I’m driving, Monique is silent, we’re on the M1 somewhere between Nottingham and Leicester. The temperature had plummeted with the coming of rain, so I’ve turned on the seat warmers and windscreen wipers, thinking that now it will all have been washed away, the proof against me on the crux. And in the warm interior Monique suddenly says she can smell perfume, and from the corner of my eye I see her turning towards me and glancing down into my lap. ‘You’ve got something white on the inside of your thigh.’

  ‘Resin,’ I say quickly, without taking my eyes off the road. As though I had known she would point this out and had my explanation ready.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence.

  * * *

  —

  ‘You killed your best friend,’ said Franz Schmid.

  The tone was neither shocked nor accusing. He was simply stating a fact.

  ‘Now you know as much about me as I know about you,’ I said.

  He looked up at me. A breath of wind lifted his quiff. ‘And you think that means I’ve nothing to fear from you. But your crime is beyond the statute of limitations now. You can’t be punished for it.’