The Method Read online

  ‘The common cold was eradicated in the twenties,’ says Driss.

  ‘Thank you, Fräulein Lightning.’ Lizzie rolls her eyes.

  ‘There was a warning just recently,’ murmurs Pollie.

  ‘Did you hear that, Driss? Pollie reads The Healthy Mind. So here’s me, with my heart in my throat, standing in the doorway, and what do I see? Ute’s little lad crouching next to my poppet, who’s got her nose in a bag of pepper – sneezing for all she’s worth!’

  Pollie starts to laugh. ‘Goodness,’ she says, ‘they were playing!’

  ‘She was pretending to be sick!’ says Driss, joining in.

  ‘Honestly, I could have done with a doctor myself, they gave me such a fright.’

  The three women are standing in the hallway, as if to recreate the constellation of the previous day – and the day before that, and every other day. The eternal chain of recurrence reaches forward as well as back, offering the exact same picture for days and weeks to come: Lizzie, propped against the coiled hose of the disinfection machine, Pollie resting on the bacteriometer, and Driss with both arms on the stair rail. The main door opens, and the women stop talking at once. It’s him again: the man in the dark suit. The lower half of his face is obscured by a white cloth, but anyone can see from his eyes that he is dashingly handsome.

  ‘Santé! Good afternoon, ladies!’

  ‘I’ve seen better,’ says Lizzie, sticking out a hip and resting a hand on her waist. ‘A really good afternoon is when there’s nothing for us to do.’

  Driss points to the man’s face. ‘You know you don’t have to …?’

  ‘She means you don’t need a hygiene mask,’ says Pollie quickly.

  ‘This is a monitored house,’ explains Lizzie. ‘You won’t catch anything here.’

  ‘Ah, the plaque by the door!’ Kramer loosens the band at the back of his head. ‘I should have realised.’

  He stuffs the mask into his jacket pocket. Silence ensues.

  Since no one is likely to speak for some time, we may as well go over some facts with regard to monitored housing. Certain households, selected for their reliability, have the privilege of carrying out prophylactic measures otherwise performed by the hygiene board. Duties include regular monitoring of air quality, testing of household waste and sewage, and disinfection of all areas accessible to the public. Monitored buildings are identified by a plaque outside the front door and residents are entitled to cut-price water and power. The initiative has exceeded expectations on all fronts: not only does the state save money on public health, but individuals learn the value of community spirit. In the dark and distant past, it was claimed that people were too stupid or lazy to pool their resources and contribute democratically to public life; this view has been discredited. The residents of monitored houses are living proof that humans are absolutely capable of working together for the common good; in fact, they enjoy it. It gives them a chance to meet up, talk and make decisions: to have something to do with each other for a change.

  The man before us is positioned among the trio of white tabards with the pride of a stallion among goats. Heinrich Kramer was instrumental in introducing the monitored housing scheme, but he was famous beforehand. There isn’t a person in the country who doesn’t know who he is. This is the reason for the protracted silence and the explosion of chatter.

  ‘Holy dirt, if it isn’t …’

  ‘Well, I’ll be …’

  ‘Is it really you?’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Driss, stop staring!’

  Kramer places a hand on his chest and bows. ‘The pleasure is mine, ladies. Perhaps you can direct me to Frau Mia Holl?’

  ‘Mia!’ squeals Driss, clapping her hands. If anyone had asked her which of her neighbours might receive a visit from Heinrich Kramer, she would have picked Mia Holl. Not for any reason – she just thinks Mia is special, that’s all. ‘She lives on the top floor: the apartment with the balcony to the rear.’

  ‘It’s a nice pad,’ adds Pollie. ‘I wouldn’t mind being a scientist myself.’

  ‘She does a difficult job,’ says Lizzie reprovingly.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ says Kramer. ‘Is she in?’

  ‘She’s always in,’ says Driss. ‘Well, at the moment, at least.’ She moves closer as if to impart a secret. ‘We hardly see her any more.’

  ‘What Driss means,’ Lizzie corrects her, ‘is that Frau Holl is taking a break from work.’

  ‘Ah, a holiday …’

  ‘Hardly,’ snorts Pollie. ‘Such a pretty girl and always up there by herself. The poor thing is trawling through possible matches.’

  ‘We think Frau Holl is looking for a partner,’ explains Lizzie knowingly.

  Kramer nods. ‘Thank you, ladies. Now if you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘Mia’s a decent person.’

  ‘Herr Kramer never thought otherwise. Honestly, Driss!’

  ‘This is a monitored house, remember!’

  ‘Thank you, ladies,’ says Kramer, exiting the circle. He nods to each in turn. ‘You’ve been most helpful. And congratulations on your impeccable house.’

  Their mouths are open but no one says anything as Kramer, long legs and elastic body, disappears up the stairs.

  The Ideal Inamorata

  ‘SINCE LIFE,’ SAYS Mia, ‘is meaningless and yet you have to keep going, I sometimes feel like making sculptures out of copper pipes. I could weld them together and make a crane, or pile them up randomly like a nest of fossilised worms. Afterwards, I’d put them on a plinth and give them a name: “Temporary Structures” or “The Ideal Inamorata”.’

  Mia is sitting at her desk with her back to the room; from time to time she jots something down on one of the sheets of paper in front of her. Meanwhile, the ideal inamorata is reclining on the couch, clad in her beautiful hair and the light of the afternoon sun. We don’t know if she understands what Mia is saying or even if she can hear her voice because she doesn’t show any sign of listening or understanding. For all we know, the ideal inamorata may live in another dimension that borders on Mia’s world. Her gaze, as she stares into space, resembles the lidless stare of a fish.

  ‘I’d like to make something that will last,’ says Mia. ‘Something useless. Things with a purpose become redundant once their purpose is fulfilled. God’s purpose was to give us solace, and look what happened to him! So much for his being immortal. Am I making any sense?’

  The room is a mess. It looks as though no one has cleaned, tidied or aired the apartment for weeks.

  ‘Of course you know what I’m talking about; I was quoting Moritz. “Anyone interested in the eternal must abandon all notion of purpose, including the purpose of one’s continued presence on this earth,” he used to say.’

  When the ideal inamorata says nothing, Mia swivels round in her chair. ‘An artist, that’s what he said I should be. He was trying to provoke me. In his view, I was corrupted by science. How can you look at an object, let alone a person you love, if at the same time you’re thinking that everything – the viewer and the viewed, the world and everything in it – is just a mass of spinning atoms? How can you cope with knowing that the brain, our only way of seeing and understanding, is made of the same basic material as everything we see and know? What are we left with? A world of matter staring at itself. That’s how he put it.’

  The ideal inamorata’s relationship to matter is tenuous, which might be why Mia enjoys their conversations. She carries on talking without waiting for a response. ‘Science,’ she says, ‘destroyed the divine and shifted humankind to the heart of the action. It left us stranded without any answers in a position that’s patently absurd. Moritz said so all the time, and he was right. He and I had the same way of thinking; our conclusions were different, that’s all.’

  Mia points her pen at the ideal inamorata as if to accuse her of an unspecified crime.

  ‘He wanted to live his life for love. From the way he said it, love was just a word for anything he liked: love was nature, freedo
m, women, catching fish, hellraising. Being different. Hellraising. That’s what he meant by love.’

  Mia turns back to her desk and continues to talk while noting things down.

  ‘I need to write it down. I need to write him down. Ninety-six per cent of information is deleted from our memories after only a couple of days. Four per cent isn’t enough for Moritz. If all I have is four per cent of Moritz, I can’t carry on.’

  She writes furiously for a moment, then she lifts her head.

  ‘When we talked about love, he used to be very rude. You’re a scientist, he would say. He accused me of putting everyone – friends and enemies – under an electron microscope. Tell me, Mia, when you say the word love, does the word feel foreign in your mouth? Because your voice sounds different when you say it. You’re half an octave higher. Your larynx is constricting and your voice sounds shrill. Love. When you were little, you practised saying it in front of the mirror. Love. You used to look yourself in the eye and ask yourself why it took such an effort to say. Love. The fact is, Mia, you can’t pronounce it properly. For you, it belongs to a foreign language, you have to contort your tongue. Go on, Mia, say I love you. Say, love is more important than anything. Say, my love, my beloved. Do you love me? – Mia, you’re giving up already! Don’t walk away!’

  She swivels round in her chair, this time impatiently.

  ‘What were his last words? “Life is an offer you can also refuse.” Where’s the love in that? Sometimes a sentence cuts into the mind like a machine press, changing the template of your thoughts. How am I supposed to forget? How am I supposed to remember? You knew him, probably better than I did. I have no idea if he knew how much I loved him! I don’t even know if I miss him enough!’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ says the ideal inamorata. ‘We’re missing him right now; day and night, all we do is miss him. We miss him together. Now come here!’

  Mia gets up and walks towards the outstretched arms of the ideal inamorata. Just then, the doorbell rings.

  A Nice Gesture

  THERE ARE MOMENTS when time seems to stop. Two human beings look into each other’s eyes: matter staring at itself. For a few seconds the whole world seems to spin around the axis of their gaze, which passes through both skulls, extending to infinity. To avoid any possible confusion, let it be noted: we are not talking about love at first sight here. If we were to describe what is currently occurring between Mia and Kramer, we might compare it to the silent roar of a story about to unfold.

  Mia has opened the door, and for a moment no one says a word. It is hard to guess what Kramer is thinking; possibly he is waiting for Mia to remember her manners and invite him inside. He is a patient man. In all likelihood, he is trying not to rush her, waiting respectfully in the doorway to give her time because he understands her present situation is unusual. She is face to face with the person whom she has killed in her imagination in multiple and agonising ways. It isn’t the sort of thing that happens all the time.

  ‘How odd,’ says Mia when she finally finds her voice. ‘The television isn’t on and I can still see you quite clearly.’

  Kramer responds with a charming, open-hearted smile, a smile that no one who knows his media personality would ever believe was his. It is a private smile. A smile that says, despite his celebrity, he is still the same person at heart.

  ‘Santé,’ he says, removing his right glove and offering Mia his bare hand. She considers it closely, as if examining an exotic insect, then places her fingers in his.

  ‘A nice gesture,’ she says. ‘Straight from an old movie. It seems incongruous somehow. Aren’t you afraid of infection?’

  ‘Nothing is more important in life than style, Frau Holl – and hysteria is the enemy of stylishness.’

  ‘I suppose your face is like a label,’ says Mia pensively. ‘You can stick it on whatever opinion you like.’

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Surely you’re not asking me to welcome my brother’s murderer into my home?’

  ‘I wouldn’t insult your intelligence with such a melodramatic question. But you could offer me a drink … Perhaps some hot water?’

  Kramer strolls past Mia and heads for the sofa, causing the ideal inamorata to roll hastily aside. As soon as Kramer sits, the sofa seems made especially for him. He is untroubled by the look of revulsion on the ideal inamorata’s face – not because he doesn’t care what she thinks, which he probably doesn’t, but because he can’t see her.

  ‘Just to set things straight; I’m not the one who killed your brother. We could ask ourselves how he came by the fishing twine to hang himself in his cell.’

  Mia stops in the middle of the room, hugging her body. Her fingernails press into her flesh; she seems to be clinging to herself as if she is scared of falling. Or perhaps she is worried that her hands will break away and throttle Heinrich Kramer.

  ‘So,’ she says hoarsely, ‘I guess you’re not here to persuade me not to hate you.’

  Kramer smiles a flattered smile and smooths his hair. ‘Please,’ he says, ‘be my guest: hate away! I came to talk to you, not to marry you.’

  ‘I’d like to think we’re immunologically incompatible.’

  ‘Interestingly enough,’ says Kramer, stroking his nose, ‘we’re a match.’

  ‘Interestingly enough,’ says the ideal inamorata, stroking her nose sarcastically, ‘you’re an even bigger arsehole than we thought.’

  ‘Let’s look at this logically.’ Mia’s voice has returned to normal. ‘If you and your pack of yapping dogs hadn’t waged that campaign against Moritz, the verdict might have been different. And if the verdict had been different, he probably wouldn’t have taken his life.’

  ‘Excellent, Frau Holl, I prefer you like this.’ Kramer is resting his right arm on the back of the couch as if to embrace the ideal inamorata. ‘Like me, you’re a logical thinker, so you’ll notice the error in your reasoning. Causality isn’t the same as guilt. If it were, the Big Bang would be responsible for your brother’s death.’

  ‘Who says it wasn’t?’ says Mia, swaying as the Earth hits a pothole. She staggers, clutches at her desk and finds nothing but empty space. ‘Do you want my verdict? The Big Bang: guilty. The universe: guilty. My parents who brought us into this world: guilty. Everything and everyone who caused his death: guilty.’

  ‘Come on, Frau Holl, let me help you.’ Kramer leaves the sofa and crouches next to Mia, who has sunk to her knees. He guides her to the sofa and smooths a strand of hair gently from her forehead.

  ‘Get your hands off her,’ hisses the ideal inamorata.

  ‘I think we both need a cup of hot water,’ says Kramer, heading for the kitchen.

  Genetic Fingerprint

  THE INCIDENT UNDER discussion took place in the recent past. If we consider what happened, the chain of events seems strikingly clear. On an otherwise ordinary Saturday evening, twenty-seven-year-old Moritz Holl, a warm-hearted but strong-willed young man, described as a ‘dreamer’ by his parents, a ‘free spirit’ by his friends and a ‘bit of a nutcase’ by his sister Mia, made a terrible discovery and went to the police. A young woman by the name of Sibylle, who was meeting Moritz on a so-called ‘blind date’ beneath the South Bridge, was at the time of his arrival neither interesting nor uninteresting, but dead. The distraught young man reported the incident, gave his particulars and left. Two days later he was placed in police custody. Traces of his semen had been discovered in the body of the deceased.

  The matching of Moritz’s DNA made further investigation unnecessary. No one with any sense would dispute the fact that DNA fingerprints are unique. Even twins aren’t necessarily genetically identical, and Moritz’s only sibling isn’t a twin, but a scientist, who knows with good reason that a person’s genetic fingerprint is unique. In murder cases with clear DNA evidence, there is never any uncertainty about the outcome of the trial, nor about whether the murderer will confess. Whether as a means of salving the conscience or asking popular opinion for absolution fo
r a crime, sooner or later a proven killer always confesses. Moritz, however, seemed ignorant of this fact. He insisted that he had neither raped nor killed Sibylle. As the public sat down to watch the afternoon’s entertainment in expectation of a speedy trial, Moritz, his pale face hardened by the strength of his convictions and his blue eyes wide with innocence, proceeded to claim that he wasn’t guilty of the crime. Whenever he was permitted to speak, he said something that stuck in people’s minds like a rock anthem: ‘You are sacrificing me on the altar of your delusions.’

  His attitude was unique in the Method’s legal history. The citizens of a well-run state are aware that private interests must be aligned with the public good, especially in the murkier regions of human existence. Moritz’s courtroom appearances caused a media scandal. The constancy of his stance impressed a number of people, who called for the judge to stay the sentence. Others found new cause to despise him: first for being a murderer, and second for being obtuse.

  Amid all the excitement and confusion was Mia, her connection to Moritz now a dirty secret that the law was determined to conceal. By day she went to work and kept up with her exercise requirements; in the evening she visited the prison unobserved. Most nights, instead of sleeping, she vomited into a bowl and went outside to pour the contents down the drain: the slightest increase in stomach acid would be detected by the sensor in her toilet. Unsurprisingly, Kramer’s reports played an important, if not decisive, role in shaping the media discourse on the case. What he wrote and said was what any right-thinking, dedicated defender of scientific positivism and the Method would say and write – and now, as he busies himself in the kitchen, he repeats it to Mia.

  No High-flown Beliefs

  ‘OUR SOCIETY,’ SAYS Kramer, filling the kettle, ‘has attained its apotheosis. Unlike every previous or current form of social organisation, we’re not in thrall to the market or religion. We’re not dependent on high-flown ideological beliefs. The smug, self-serving faith in popular democracy has no place in our system. Our society is guided by reason and reason alone: its sole founding principle is taken directly from biological life. Every living organism has one thing in common, a defining characteristic that makes plants, animals and, most especially, humans what they are: the individual and collective will to survive. The consensus at the heart of our society is based on this unconditional drive, the cornerstone of our system. The Method was developed so that every individual can enjoy maximum longevity and minimal biological dysfunction – or put simply, a happy and healthy life, a life free from suffering and pain. With this in mind, we created a highly complex system, an apparatus more sophisticated than any form of government, present or past. Our laws form a delicate, perfectly attuned network, the nervous system of the state. Our system is flawless, with the inbuilt strength of the human body. And like the human body it is supremely capable of sustaining itself – but it is fragile too. The slightest infringement of the principles at the heart of this delicate organism could wound or kill it. Lemon?’