The Constant Gardener

"He is older than Lara by maybe fifteen years, he has swum in all the oceans, as we say, he is a dreamer as she is. He loves science, but never became a scientist. He loves medicine but is not a doctor. He loves God and the whole world, but he also loves hard currency and the god Profit. So he writes: "The young Lorbeer is a believer, he worships the Christian God, he worships women, but he worships also very much the god Profit." That is his downfall. He believes in God but ignores Him. Personally I reject this attitude but never mind. For a humanist, God is an excuse for not being humanistic. We shall be humanistic in the afterlife, meanwhile we make Profit. Never mind. "Lorbeer took God's gift of wisdom" — I guess he means by this the molecule — "and sold it to the devil." I guess he means KVH. Then he writes that when Tessa came to see him in the desert, he told her the full extent of his sin."

Justin sits up sharply.

"He says that? He told Tessa? When? In the hospital? Where did she come to see him? What desert? What on earth is he saying?"

"Like I told you, the document is a little crazy. He calls her the Abbott. "When the Abbott came to visit Lorbeer in the desert, Lorbeer wept." Maybe it is a dream, a fable. Lorbeer has become a penitent in the desert now. He is Elijah or Christ, I don't know. It's disgusting actually. "The Abbott called Lorbeer to account before God. Therefore at this meeting in the desert, Lorbeer explained to the Abbott the inmost nature of his sins." This is what he writes. His sins were evidently many. I don't remember them all. There was the sin of self-delusion and the sin of false argument. Then comes the sin of pride, I think. Followed by the sin of cowardice. For this he does not excuse himself at all, which makes me happy actually. But probably he is happy too. Lara says he is only happy when he is confessing or making love."

"He wrote all this in English?"

She nodded. "One paragraph he wrote like the English Bible, the next paragraph he was giving extremely technical data about the deliberately specious design of the clinical trials, the disputes between Kovacs and Emrich and the problems of Dypraxa when combined with other drugs. Only a very informed person could know such details. This Lorbeer I greatly prefer to the Lorbeer of heaven and hell, I will admit to you."

"Abbott with a small A?"

"Large. "The Abbott recorded everything I told her." But there was another sin. He killed her."

Waiting, Justin fixed his gaze on the recumbent Carl.

"Maybe not directly, he is ambiguous. "Lorbeer killed her with his treachery. He committed the sin of Judas, therefore he cut her throat with his bare hands and nailed Bluhm to the tree." When I was reading out these words to Lara, I asked her: "Lara. Is Markus saying that he killed Tessa Quayle?"'"

"How did she reply?"

"Markus could not kill his worst enemy. That is his agony, she says. To be a bad man with a good conscience. She is Russian, very depressed."

"But if he killed Tessa, he's not a good man, is he?"

"Lara swears it would be impossible. Lara has many letters from him. She can only love hopelessly. She has heard many confessions from him, but not this one, naturally. Markus is very proud of his sins, she says. But he is vain and exaggerates them. He is complicated, maybe a bit psychotic, which is why she loves him."

"But she doesn't know where he is?"

"No."

Justin's straight, unseeing stare had fixed on the deceptive twilight. "Judas didn't kill anyone," he objected. "Judas betrayed."

"But the effect was the same. Judas killed with his treachery."

Another long contemplation of the twilight. "There's a missing character. If Lorbeer betrayed Tessa, who did he betray her to?"

"It was not clear. Maybe the Forces of Darkness. I have only what is in my memory."

"The Forces of Darkness?"

"In the letter he talked of the Forces of Darkness. I hate this terminology. Does he mean KVH? Maybe he knows other forces."

"Did the document mention Arnold?"

"The Abbott had a guide. In the document he is the Saint. The Saint had called out to Lorbeer in the hospital and told him the drug Dypraxa was an instrument of death. The Saint was more cautious than the Abbott because he is a doctor, and more tolerant because he has experience of human wickedness. But the greatest truth is with Emrich. Of this Lorbeer is certain. Emrich knows everything, therefore she is not allowed to speak. The Forces of Darkness are determined to repress the truth. That is why the Abbott had to be killed and the Saint crucified."

"Crucified? Arnold?"

"In Lorbeer's fable the Forces of Darkness dragged Bluhm away and nailed him to a tree."

They fell silent, both in some way ashamed.

"Lara says also that Lorbeer drinks like a Russian," she added, in some kind of mitigation, but Justin was not to be deflected.

"He writes from the desert but he uses a courier service out of Nairobi," he objected.