The Reichenbach Problem, Page 21

  I sucked in two lungfuls of air, drew myself into an aggressive, challenging stance and assumed the “ready” position. I stood sideways, to present as narrow a target as possible, then set my feet apart; one for’ard, one aft. This gave me balance, a lower centre of gravity, and options to spring backwards or launch forwards as circumstances demanded. I then raised my right fist to guard my jaw and crooked my left arm so that I could present my left fist, now clenched and ready to strike, towards my opponent.

  My “ready” position took him aback. There is a difference between a pedestrian making his unsuspecting way back to his hotel and a man who is plainly trained to some considerable degree in the art and craft of boxing; someone who, moreover, has not chosen to fly at the first opportunity, but chooses instead to stay, to square up to his assailant, and to offer battle.

  My opponent, having weighed up the odds and possibly deciding it would be difficult if not impossible to circumnavigate me in order to gain the exit to the alley, made himself ready also. Although his readiness consisted in lowering his chin, hunching his shoulders and presenting his hands, fingers extended. He looked like a rugby full-back waiting to tackle a twenty-stone forward who in turn was intent upon trampling him underfoot on his regal process to the try line. However, if he considered me to be a bumbling British doctor interested only in edelweiss and alpine strolls, then he was about to be sadly mistaken.

  A further moment passed as we eyed each other in the gloom. This calm before the storm was broken by his decision to chance his arm. He growled like a grizzly bear and leapt at me with fingers which clutched towards my throat. I stepped lightly to one side and applied a clout to his left temple as he passed.

  First points on the score sheet to me.

  He staggered to a halt, turned, and foolishly, having not learned his lesson, committed himself to quite the same manoeuvre again. To paraphrase His Grace, the late, lamented Duke of Wellington, he came at me in the same old way and so I repelled him in the same old way. I delivered a pretty reminder of my presence, this time to his right temple.

  Infuriated, and no doubt by now increasingly aggravated to the point of impulsive rage, he no longer paused even to think. Instead, he spun on his heel and lunged with flailing arms hoping to hit something that resembled flesh and blood rather than thin air. For a third time – was he never going to learn? – I stepped thoughtfully aside to let him pass. Once more, I assisted his passage, with a right fist driven into his ribcage and following through. This augmented his momentum and drove him with a most gratifying thudding noise against the obstinate wall at the side of the hotel.

  He let loose a yell of frustration. Finally, having learned his lesson, he decided upon an entirely different plan of attack. He rumbled towards me, head down and both fists clenched just beneath his chin. I waited patiently for his approach. I watched as he drew back his right hand, like an archer with his bowstring, prior to delivering a hammer blow. Before he had the opportunity to deliver it, however, I threw four punches, rapid fire, straight into his solar plexus. Right, left, right, left. Almost military precision. He just stood there, clutching himself and gulping in air like a beached trout.

  His head lowered and he began swaying slightly like a birch sapling in a summer breeze. I could, of course, have delivered any number of further blows at will, to almost any point of the man’s anatomy of my choosing. But I had always made it a rule never to hit an opponent when he was not looking. Not only did I consider it unsporting, but I also wanted my victim to see the blows being launched. He needed to realize that he was powerless to protect himself from them. Boxing is all about power. Superiority. Arrogance. It is a sport which suits the male of the species very well.

  So I waited courteously for him to regain at least some equilibrium.

  Eventually, the great brute, who had found it so easy and necessary to catch me off-guard in order to bully me in that violent and cowardly way, raised his head to look at me. He tried a feeble left jab to my jaw. A strike which to evade was simplicity itself. He drew his right hand back again to follow his first shot with a huge haymaker. His intention, I assumed, was to entirely, and without mercy, separate my head from my shoulders. The left jab was plainly designed to encourage me to evade it. In doing so, this would put me in the line of fire of his right fist. This, in turn, would place my head in exactly the correct position to receive the incoming, and for his part hopefully unseen, right fist.

  However, it was an old trick and one I had no difficulty in recognizing. Before he had even embarked on the second phase of his strategy, viz: the right hook, I had not only evaded the left jab but had leaned back and danced two quick steps to the right. I had avoided the now redundant left arm. In order to reach me with his haymaker now, he would have to shift his balance and practically lean across, and over, his own left arm to land any sort of shot at all. That is, if he were agile enough. I had seen sufficient of him by now to know that agility was by no means his strongest suit.

  All of this took place in an instant. I found that time always did slow down to an extraordinary extent when I boxed. For me, I had always found when in such bouts that I began to think more quickly, more lucidly and more accurately than when I was just lumbering along on my daily round. Having seen and evaded his dull plan, I therefore decided that it was time to finish the business.

  With decision came icy resolve, immediately followed by action.

  I landed two sharp, stinging jabs straight into my opponent’s ribcage just under the heart. He buckled and dropped his hands, tipping forward in the explosion of pain he was experiencing. I brought my right up from around my waist. With a most satisfactory and percussive “crack” I made point-blank contact with the dimple in the centre of his chin. This blow, for I have experienced it myself in my younger, greener days, snaps the upper and lower teeth together with unforgiving velocity. It has been known to loosen, crack or even dislodge the occasional molar. It also serves to drive the jawbone straight back into the skull. There is a sensation not unlike being hit on the cranium by a falling log. This is accompanied by a bright flash, or a succession of lights. Meanwhile, the tang of something similar to iodine instantly pervades the nasal cavity. Usually the recipient of such a collection of sensations ends up in a crumpled heap upon the canvas.

  The recipient of this particular sequence of sensations did not disappoint. His knees crumbled like crushed chalk and he expelled a deep sigh that turned into a moan. And then he collapsed.

  I stood over him and allowed him a few seconds’ respite, after which I jangled his ribs with the point of my boot toe.

  “Hey!” I called, loudly enough to cause him to stir. “Hey!”

  He groaned and rolled over onto his back.

  “Hugo. Can you hear me?”

  He groaned in affirmation and clutched his head, his jaw and his belly in that order. I spoke German. Apart from fisticuffs, it was the only language we both understood.

  “I do not know why you attacked me and I don’t particularly care, but you should know that I have no intention towards your wife and never shall have. You should also know that I was boxing champion at both school and college. If you forget either of these facts, I shall be more than pleased to remind you of them at any time. Just ask.”

  With that, I retrieved my hat, which had fallen off in the initial mêlée, dusted it with a few swift passes of my hand, and replaced it upon my head. I rather suspect it sat there at an immodestly jaunty angle.

  I left the alley to the accompaniment of Hugo’s soft moans.

  I did not know why, as I told him, I had been attacked. I surmised that a drinking companion of Hugo’s, on his way to the bar, had seen me paying Francesca a private visit and had told him. He, returning in a rage, had perhaps seen me approaching my hotel and had decided there and then to ambush me. It could be, though, that there was a more sinister reason, and he had been either ordered or paid to set upon me. And then a further possible explanation occurred to me. Perhaps Francesca
and Hugo had planned the whole escapade. Perhaps they merely disguised it as an affaire d’honneur or d’amour. Perhaps Francesca had deliberately lured me to her home.

  With these confusing and unnerving considerations, I stepped into the hotel and made my way to my room to bathe my bruises.

  On arrival I studied my appearance in the mirror. It seemed I had escaped lightly. I really had no wish to discuss my recent bout with my fellow guests. It would not do to have to reveal why Hugo had attacked me. My body, certainly, was mottled from his blows. I resolved to wear light trousers and to cover my arms until the bruising subsided. Thankfully, though, he had hardly touched my face; the reason one keeps one’s hands up when boxing. Any red marks, I felt sure, would fade quickly. In the meantime, they could be passed off as how a British complexion can sometimes look after too much exposure to the Alpine sun.

  FOURTEEN

  Back in my room, regaining my equilibrium and contemplating an early supper, I became aware of raised voices in the room next to mine. They continued for a short while. Then there was a slammed door, followed by the sound of voices in conversation. Having restrained myself thus far, I found it impossible to resist looking out at this point. I opened my door tentatively and peered around the frame. Werner was standing by the bedroom door next to mine, looking awkward and seemingly not knowing quite where to put his hands. Sobbing fitfully on his ample left pectoral muscle was mevrouw van Engels. I approached them and asked what the matter was. She turned watery eyes towards me.

  “Don’t hurt him. He does not mean it.” She buried her face into Werner’s ample breast again. For a moment, I thought that she was talking about the Bavarian. However, the latter’s bearing did not suggest either that he was being indiscreet nor that, at that particular moment, he bore anyone sufficient malice to require physical restraint. I therefore concluded that the subject under discussion was someone else, and that someone was most likely the professor himself. Bavarian with characteristics A, B plus C; Dutchman with characteristics X, Y plus Z – so to speak.

  “Is it your husband, madam?”

  She turned to look at me and then nodded. She nestled back into her hiding place, as if she were playing peek-a-boo or hide-and-seek.

  “I can assist in nothing if you will not explain what it is that is distressing you.” I was hoping to jolt her out of her hysteria. It was to no avail. Like a bear in deepest winter, she refused to emerge from her cave. So I suggested to Werner that he take care of the lady while I went to see if I might track her husband down and extract, perhaps, a little more clarity from him.

  As I left to go downstairs, I suggested that they repaired to the lady’s room. They withdrew as suggested and I heaved a great sigh. Domestic incidents on top of my current pursuits of investigating murders, falling off cliffs, being shot at, and ambushed by thugs were the last things I required at the moment. However, the problem needed resolving, as van Engels might say, so resolve it I must.

  I did not know why I was always so eager to be the person who takes up the reins on any runaway carriages. It was perhaps due to my childhood. My father was a drunk and a spendthrift, and eventually needed clinical care for his mental disarray. Perhaps I subsequently grew unable to endure any such disturbance between two people. I always felt the need to repair emotional damage between people as quickly as possible. I remembered the dark nights lying under my bedclothes with my coverlet hauled tightly over my head, trying to make the sound of my father’s unmanageable outbursts and my mother’s corresponding rages go away. Night after night I wanted desperately to leap from my room, clatter downstairs, box both parents about the ears and order them to desist. Undoubtedly, it was this deep-rooted urge that drove me to seek out Professor van Engels and try to effect a reconciliation.

  I found the gentleman in the library. It was he, I assumed, who had closed the shutters. He sat on a hard oak chair in the darkest corner, leaning forward so that his forearms rested along his thighs, his hands clasped together. The room was musty with last evening’s tobacco smoke, as it always was, but there was a further fug – the reek of both stale and fresh alcohol on exhaled breath. Brandy, I should have thought. All at once, I was transported twenty years back to one of many interviews with my father. All the emotions of those terrible, confusing, disconcerting times washed over me like a rip tide. That unbearable concoction of fear, disgust, hate, compassion, incomprehension and an overwhelming desire to weep, mixed with a powerful refusal not to. These emotions sallied forth from the depths of my memory, where I thought I had sealed them away permanently, and laid clamorous siege to my soul once again.

  I approached van Engels, as I had approached, on many occasions, my father. I pushed open one of the shutters to allow in a little light and air. I then drew up a chair close to the Dutchman, and sat down. He did not look up. Oftentimes my mother, who had just contributed to a ferocious row with my father, would despatch me as the peacemaker and the bridge-builder. It was pride, perhaps. It was also weakness. I was very young, not even an adolescent yet, and still I was obliged to take on the mantle of mature adulthood; to display the negotiating skills of a seasoned diplomat.

  I now realized how intensely unfair, cruel even, they had been to use me in such a way. I also realized how when people are broken down, they are no longer able to consider matters objectively. They are unable even to seek help in their extreme, unremitting incapacity. It occurred to me that what some folk need, even in advanced adulthood, is the security, authority and wisdom of their parents. Yet with parents like mine, I suppose that I rarely experienced those particular qualities.

  “Van Engels?” To my shame, I did not know his first name. “Van Engels, it is I, Conan Doyle.” He did not look up, so I persisted. “Is there anything that I can do?”

  “Nothing.”

  I had elicited a reaction, at least.

  “We should talk.”

  “Why? What for? It is useless.”

  “What is useless?”

  “Everything. It is all useless. When it all comes down to it, we are all alone. People always let you down. People you trust.”

  “We are never alone unless we choose to cut ourselves off from other people.”

  “I choose this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I do.”

  “Yes, but why do you?”

  He looked up and across at me. His eyes were still capable of focusing, I noted; so he was not too inebriated. He was slurring his words and much of what he said was pronounced in the deep, greasy manner of the drunkard. But he was, I believed, capable of conducting an intelligible conversation, at least. I repeated my question.

  “Why do you choose to be alone?”

  “Because it is best.”

  “Running away?”

  He became agitated and stiffened. “I am not running away. You cannot say I am running away. How dare you suggest this? Who are you to talk to me like this? You do not know. You are not my keeper.”

  “I know… I know… I was only saying…” I crooned; nothing worse than an angry drunk.

  “Well, don’t say this.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “I won’t.”

  It seemed he was settling, but then he erupted again.

  “Who are you, anyway? You have no right. How dare you! This is your fault. You. I blame you!”

  “Me?”

  “Of course, or are you so stupid you cannot see it? Yes. You are stupid. I always thought you were stupid. You disgust me. Stupid, disgusting man.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “No. You do not. This is because you are disgusting, stupid.”

  “I am not stupid and, I should add, I do not think that the personal abuse you are addressing to me is really helping very much. It is also not polite.”

  “Tchah!” he said. But he abated, my firm tone holding him for a while. He resorted to hanging his head and resting his arms along his legs as before. Occasionally his
head bobbed, as if he were nodding off. This was the alcohol seeping across his consciousness like the Thames mist and taking control. At length, he forced his head to jerk up and to look at me again. “Why are you here? I do not want you here. Go away. Leave me!”

  “I am not going away.”

  “Why not? I insist you go away.”

  “I am not going away.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you say you are always alone and people always let you down. I am not going to leave you.”

  “This is because you are stupid. And a fool.”

  “Then the world needs more fools. I am happy to be a fool.”

  “Then you are a fool to be thus happy.”

  “Perhaps.”

  He licked his lips and ran his sleeve across his mouth. He looked about him, as if coming to terms with his environment for the first time that evening.

  “Fool,” he said again, throatily.

  He then began to talk.

  It was a meandering monologue that for such a structuralist was completely out of character. It was as if he wanted to drain himself of all the impurities and detritus that had built up within him over the years. Nearly all of it made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Oftentimes he would come out with whole sentences in Dutch and these also, I believed, contained many expressions of disgust; with himself, with me, with others – it made no difference. I allowed him to ramble on for about fifteen minutes, pouring out his anguish – which is what it was – to me, and yet I need not have been present at all. I was also aware that whatever it was that he was trying to exorcise from himself, whatever evil memories and past hurts there were contained in that lengthy rant, it was probably only a hundred thousandth of the pain and anger that lay so deeply – probably ultimately immovably – embedded within his bosom. His was a tormented soul, and my own wept for it.

  When he finally allowed me the opportunity to speak, I let him know that I did not think any the less of him. I also told him that not everything that he had told me would be resolved in one conversation nor, indeed, in one day. There was much that he had told me of his anger that I did not understand and resolved privately to see if his wife might enlighten me.