Seven Lies Read Online Free Page B

glass. He stooped down at once to examine it, prodding the wrapping with his fingers, an expression of grave concern on his face. Then all of asudden a most extraordinary cynical sneer took possession of his features. Fully aware of me looking at him, he dumped the parcel at the door of the elderly couple and padded off, shrugging as he passed me by, as if to say, Nobody will know it was me who broke it, and even if they suspect, there’s nothing they can do about it . Furthermore, he seemed to convey that my having witnessed it, far from alarming him, in fact implicated me in the deed itself, making me no better than him. And the strange thing was, I did feel mysteriously implicated, and guilty too. It was the first time I had seen an adult do something patently and knowingly ‘wrong’, and the idea that such a thing could be came as a profound shock. From then on, whenever I ran into Brandt on my own, he would give me a contemptuous, almost taunting look, as though to say that he and I knew each other too well to have to pretend to be respectable citizens.
    Otto told him we needed to get into the storeroom. He rose with a lugubrious sigh, evidently meaning to accompany us.
    â€˜No need for you to come,’ Otto said suavely. ‘Just give us the key and we’ll let ourselves in. Here, this is for you. Compliments of the house.’
    Brandt hesitated, holding the bottle in his hand as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Then he winked unpleasantly – or rather it seemed that his scar winked – and unhooked the key from the ring at his belt.
    The storeroom occupied a large area of the basement and consisted of a series of open cubicles behind a single steel-mesh fence with a padlocked door in it. We opened this door with the key Brandt had given us, and by the dim light of a couple of naked bulbs found the cubicle that corresponded to our apartment, picking our way between the many gluetraps Brandt had set out, in which insects and the occasional mouse lay in odd contorted positions, some of them still twitching with life.
    There in our cubicle, among bits and pieces of old furniture which we no longer used, lay my mother’s trunk: not so very large, but with ornate hasps of tarnished brass at every corner and great florid brass buckles that intimated a world of strange and remote ceremoniousness. I suppose I must have seen it before, but I had never taken much notice of it, and certainly never looked inside.
    A sweet, mildewy smell rose as we opened the heavy lid. It was neatly packed, everything stowed in small boxes or bundles. The linen was in one corner, in a rust-coloured cotton sack, itself monogrammed with the intertwined initials and three falcons of the von Riesen crest. My brother looked on impassively, apparently less intrigued than I by this faintly mouldy-smelling exhumation of our family’s past, while I poked around, turning up a set of silver spoons, an old marbled photograph album and a case of pocket-sized books beautifully bound in dark green leather.
    â€˜Come on,’ Otto said, grabbing the pile of linen, ‘the mother’ll start fretting.’
    I looked at the case of books. Of all things, it was a set of poetry: World Poetry in Translation, Volumes I to VI . I didn’t know or for that matter care very much about literature, but I had an instinct for contraband, and the thought of anything – poetry included – that might not be officially approved of automatically excited my interest. I opened one of the books: poetry on one side, German prose translation on the other, but Otto was growing impatient.
    â€˜Let’s split,’ he said, ‘it gives me the creeps down here.’
    Closing the trunk, we went back upstairs, Otto waiting forthe elevator with the linen while I returned the key to Herr Brandt.
    Seeing me alone, the man immediately relaxed into that familiar contemptuous expression.
    â€˜So did you find what you were