Chapter 30 Leda and the Swan 01
Albanino was not surprised when he heard the sound of rain passing through the porch.
There was not the slightest sound when the door was opened—more likely because his door had never been locked in the first place. When you know that someone will find a way in even if they have to pry the door open, you might as well just leave the door open for them.
He sat in the armchair at the far end of the room. The flames in the fireplace had grown very faint, but they still burned slowly and lazily. In the air there was a scent that mingled the freshness of pine resin with the sharp, biting acidity of white wine. He neither turned around nor rose to his feet, feeling the other’s gaze sweep like a knife across the bare strip of skin at his wrist resting on the arm of the chair.
“Good evening.” That was what he said to the Pianist.
—It was October 30th, 1:25 in the morning.
Just like that, captured,
Overpowered by violence descending from the heavens,
Had she ever grasped the wisdom of the god who draws upon divine power,
Before that indifferent beak had set her down?
A damp, cold chill of rain was swept into the room by the wind, much like the night when Albanino was released from federal prison and Hestal presented Bob Landon’s corpse to the police. The rain still showed no sign of stopping—Westland’s autumn was always like this.
Hestal closed the door with his heel, a faint click. Albanino was still sitting calmly at the far end of the room, where only the small, warm glow of the fireplace encircled him. Hestal had guessed right—Albanino was indeed the type who would enjoy a fireplace. By this faint light, he was able to take in the room’s arrangement.
Hestal had looked up the relevant information before, learning that Albanino had bought this plot of land after his parents passed away and he sold the house they originally owned in Westland. Land in the countryside was relatively cheap—the roughly three or four acres surrounding this house, including a small portion of the forest that encircled Westland and, of course, mostly weed-covered wilderness, legally belonged to Albanino.
This was one of the best places for dumping a body that Hestal could think of, and besides, Albanino didn’t seem like the type to be reckless enough to toss large bones outside. All in all, the story Albanino had told before was still accurate: his land was unlikely to be visited by any creatures other than coyotes, foxes, hares, squirrels, and the like. Albanino’s house stood alone in the wilderness, connected to the main road by a poorly maintained private driveway.
It was an unremarkable two-story house—possibly with a basement as well. The white paint on the exterior walls was somewhat faded and peeling, making it look like the kind of house where someone with no ambitions in life would live. But the interior looked quite tidy. There were no traces of a designer’s touch in the decor; it seemed to have been slowly pieced together from many practical and comfortable parts—a secondhand sofa so soft it looked like it could almost swallow a person whole, wooden floors that had been painted more than once, wallpaper of questionable taste, and bookshelves that looked handmade no matter how you looked at them. How should one put it—it was “traces of a person living.”
It wasn’t hard for Hestal to imagine Albanino repairing the house himself, buying furniture, even painting the walls with his own hands. It was secretive and private, and strangely vulnerable. Therefore, they both should be able to understand this: Albanino’s intrusion into Hestal’s impersonal apartment was different in meaning from what this night represented.
Yet the intruder remained entirely unruffled. Albanino held his tall glass, his attention seemingly still fixed more on the wine within, which shimmered with a faint trace of gold.
Then, in a very amiable tone, he said, “This is a white wine newly made last year by the Paso Sanmaro winery. It wasn’t aged in oak barrels—a wine this young is mostly sold locally in Spain, and it’s very hard to find elsewhere. It took some effort for me to get this bottle.”
—His implication was abundantly clear: Would you like to try some?
“I didn’t know you also liked Spanish wine.” Hestal’s tone still sounded cold, and he of course completely ignored the hint.
“Just a habit,” Albanino seemed to let out a soft laugh—or at least, the flickering shadows of the flames traced the illusion of a smile across his face. “When my father was alive, he would make a bottle of this every year. He thought it was very commemorative.”
For the first two seconds, Hestal didn’t understand what the other meant, but then his gaze fell upon the label of the wine bottle: the name of the winery, “PAZU de San MAURO,” was printed in bold on the glass, and beneath it, a string of smaller letters indicated the white grape variety used to make the wine—
“Albariño.”
Somehow, Hestal suddenly found the scene somewhat absurd—and not just because of Albanino and a wine made from a white grape that shared his name. Perhaps it was the tone he used when mentioning his family, a tone that gave the illusion that he truly cared about someone.
In the end, Hestal responded with a cold, icy chuckle. And Albanino finally deigned to shift his chair, facing him, though his body language still seemed languid.
“After all, my father was a hopeless drunkard. He met my mother at a wine festival in Spain in August, and he must have thought naming me this was perfectly appropriate.” There was a note of amusement in Albanino’s voice as he stared at Hestal with keen interest: despite the other man wearing casual clothes—no one would ever imagine that someone like Hestal Amarette would actually wear casual clothes—and having sneaked into someone’s home late at night, he looked every bit like he was there to kill and rob.
Hestal didn’t like that look. It seemed as though it was about to pierce through some barrier that didn’t actually exist. He exhaled slowly, watching the flickering flames dance across Albanino’s wrist.
“My father once told me that Albariño is a very peculiar and changeable grape. As long as the rainfall and temperature vary slightly from year to year, or the winemaking method differs even a little, the resulting wine’s flavor will be entirely different.” Hestal heard the other man say in an even tone. “Because of this, their flavors are endlessly varied—even an excellent sommelier might mistake an Albariño for something else. The first time I drank this wine, I thought it was a Chenin Blanc.”
“So?” Hestal didn’t bother to suppress the sharpness in his voice, nor was he willing to spend time deciphering the metaphors in Albanino’s words when he brought up this topic.
A soft laugh slipped from Albanino’s throat. He set the glass back down on the table and looked at Hestal. His gaze was full of a curious scrutiny, and then he asked, “In your family, who was the alcoholic?”
Hestal furrowed his brow.
“When I mentioned that my father ‘drank like a fish,’ you wore a rather contemptuous expression,” Albanino’s tone was excessively casual, but of course, he had never known how to be respectful. “He was the type who had to have wine with dinner every day. He loved the stuff the way young people love marijuana—but I’m guessing your family isn’t that type, are they?”
His gaze was so utterly candid that it could reveal an emotion that could only be described as “you know there’s no point in lying to me.” Albanino stood up just like that, slowly strolling toward the other man, finally stopping in the center of the living room, as if unaware that there was certainly a knife in Hestal’s coat pocket. He had his back to the glow of the fireplace, a layer of golden halo resting on his chestnut-colored curly hair.
“I thought we had reached the point where we could exchange secrets of this magnitude,” he said in a breathy voice.
“Then I can only say that you and I don’t see eye to eye on this matter,” Hestal said in a low voice. “Besides, you know I didn’t come here for that.”
Albanino smiled and blinked, but even Hestal hadn’t expected what he would say next. Albanino said: “Then let’s talk about Elliot Evans again—among your elders, who was it that sexually assaulted you?”
“What?”
When Hestal asked this question, it didn’t even sound like a question to his own ears. Something more—like a scorching river surging through his veins—overwhelmed him. His gaze clung to Albanino, and of course, it failed to wipe that smile off the other man’s face.
“In 1987, a murder took place in a small church in southern Kentucky,” Albanino stated, a cheerful gleam flickering in his mint-green eyes. “A deacon and a very devout local parishioner were hanged in the nave of the church, directly above the altar and on either side of the crucifix—just like the two criminals who were crucified alongside Jesus. The church’s parish priest disappeared and was never seen again, so the local police listed him as the primary suspect. But those two victims were hanged in—”
He didn’t finish his sentence—partly because Hestal stepped forward without hesitation and slammed a fist into his face, and partly because the two of them soon crashed heavily to the ground together, Hestal pinning Albanino’s abdomen with his knee, his right hand clamped around his throat, and then he drove a second punch into his face.
This scene was exactly like what had happened to the police before they burst into Elliot’s basement. Albanino’s already scabbed lips began to bleed again. Struggling under Hestal’s grip, he twisted his head and spat out a mouthful of bloody foam from between his lips, while a choked laugh escaped from his throat.
“Those two victims were hung from the ceiling with piano strings from the church’s hymn-practice piano. That’s one hell of a workload for a fourteen-year-old, isn’t it?”
Albanino continued in a hoarse voice, looking straight into the blue eyes that gazed down at him from above.
“The Pianist’s works have always shown an abnormal contempt for rapists. In that case back in April, you were the one who cut off Trep Carloan’s genitals and stuffed them into his abdominal cavity before he was even dead.”
“So, which of the two of them was the one who sexually assaulted you? Or are they just heartless bystanders, and the real mastermind is that priest who’s nowhere to be found? During all those years when your unemployed father was lost in alcoholism and your mother had vanished without a trace, wouldn’t you have preferred to spend your time with the church—”
Albanino didn’t finish. Herstal’s third punch landed in his abdomen. He struck hard, and the body pinned beneath him trembled in agony, trying to curl up. Under Herstal’s fingers, Albanino let out a breathless, retching gag. Herstal barely noticed—blood was crashing against his eardrums like tidal waves.
Because, of course, Albanino didn’t actually need to ask him to figure out which of his family members was the alcoholic. This man had so many connections, so many friends working in the police department—in Westland, there were plenty of dirty cops who’d dig up everything about a person for a little money.
Herstal pressed his weight onto Albanino’s calf and reached down, roughly grabbing his hair to force his head up. There was a wet red ring around Albanino’s eyes, his eyelashes trembling, his lips covered in blood—but he was still smiling. That expression, wrested from pain, fit over his face like a seamless mask.
Herstal felt that his own voice was close to a roar: “You did it for this reason—”
“To sell you out to Elliot Evans?” Albanino wiped the blood off his face haphazardly with the back of his hand, the bright red smearing across his face like strange face paint. “You can’t even imagine how easy it was to flush him out of a city. If he hadn’t gone looking for a prostitute and then been unable to perform, suspected she was mocking him, and turned violent toward her, I might not have found him so quickly—you can imagine, Herstal, how fragile he is, how easily led. How easy it was to make him pick a victim who already fit his rules. I didn’t even need to say your name in front of him…”
“You did all of this just for—”
“Curiosity.” Albanino answered crisply and without hesitation.
Then he swiftly lifted Hestal’s lower abdomen above his head, which must have pressed against the edge of that long wound beneath his ribs. Albanino heard the other hiss, and he quickly broke free from Hestal’s grip.
The two of them rolled and wrestled on the ground. Briefly, Albanino at one point pinned Hestal to the floor, using his forearm to press down on his throat. As he leaned down, he could feel blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, splattering with a pat onto the space beneath the other’s eyes.
“You can’t imagine how you look in others’ eyes, Pianist,” Albanino hissed, able to feel the other struggling desperately beneath his cruel hold—of course he would, that was the very essence of this relationship. “—That vibrant cruelty, that savage madness. I’m curious, I want to know how you’d react if I did that. Would your nightmare replay itself upon you?”
—And the other did not disappoint him.
Of course, that wasn’t elegant enough, nor refined enough. When they stood in Elliot Evans’s basement, looking at the moment of that young man’s fragmented corpse soaking in a river of blood—but this was closer to the true nature of the Westland Pianist, the cruel true face beneath the exquisite paper wrapping of irony and display, the original purpose behind his creation of these bloody murders.
A feast for the eyes.
The next second, Hestal threw him off. This lawyer was quite inconsistent with the general impression people had of his profession in these respects—for instance, his movements were truly startlingly agile; of course, it was also possible that this was a masterpiece born of the fury and adrenaline mixed in his blood.
Albanino staggered to his feet. Aside from his split lip and scraped cheekbone, his nose was also bleeding, the fresh blood staining a patch of his shirtfront red. Almost the instant he stood up, Hestal charged at him. He hadn’t quite assumed a defensive posture—or perhaps he had other intentions—in any case, he was immediately slammed hard against the wall by the other man, and something on the cabinet beside them was knocked over, crashing to the floor with a loud bang.
This was one of the benefits of living out in the middle of nowhere. If they had made this kind of racket in the city, the neighbors probably would have called the police by now.
Hestal grabbed him by the ends of his hair and slammed him against the wall several times. Albanino wasn’t counting. The dull thuds were truly terrifying, but the speed was just as fast—though murder was generally fast anyway—until blood slid down from his hair, soaking it into clumps.
Albanino couldn’t stop himself from sliding down the wall, held up entirely by Hestal’s tight grip on his collar. Albanino clutched Hestal’s wrist. He could feel the warm sensation of blood sliding down his cheek. He blinked the blood from his eyelashes and smiled faintly.
“Are you planning to kill me like this?” Albanino asked, his voice sounding surprisingly curious.
Herstal stared at him, the color of his irises still seeming like a blue flame that danced without ever going out. That gaze was like a knife, as if intent on peeling away his flesh and blood, and Albanino suspected that the same thought was turning over in the other man’s mind as well.
“Because it’s true—you don’t kill people with criminal records because you think you’re a judge above God. You do it just to vent your passion and rage, like a person fleeing shadows that haunt him like ghosts.” Albanino’s enunciation sounded soft and indistinct. “But you also have to admit that I’m different from them, right?”
“You and those people are not the same type. There’s no need to avoid that fact.” Herstal answered hoarsely, and Albanino knew that this description was not actually a compliment either—because, as Olga Moroz had always assessed: as a psychopath, the Sunday Gardener did not consider himself and his victims to be the same kind of creature.
“Will you cut me open like them? Take out my organs, wait for me to bleed dry, and then hang me up with piano wire? Will you take away my heart? I like its metaphorical implications.” Albanino curled his fingers, encircling Herstal’s wrist, and could feel the frantic beating of the other’s pulse beneath the skin. “Or do you admit that it would be a waste on me? Because apart from me, no one else has yet seen through your true nature—the deepest depths of the abyss?”
The Pianist would of course fall into a brief moment of hesitation at this instant, because although Albarino had indeed angered Hestal, he knew that the other also genuinely enjoyed certain parts of this game: especially the part concerning Bob Landon.
In this situation, you cannot simply flip the board just because you are at a disadvantage—it seems to be entirely a matter of rules, even though the whole affair may have no rules to speak of at all.
“Remember those white grapes we talked about before, Hestal?” Albanino suddenly spoke up, catching the fleeting look of confusion that flashed through the other’s eyes. “Interesting, peculiar fruit—because of the subtle differences in how they’re fermented, the taste varies enormously…”
Hestal warned in a low voice, “Albanino—”
The Sunday Gardener let out a low laugh, which, given that blood was still dripping down along his lips, sounded almost like a choking cough.
“Are you sure you don’t want a taste, Pianist?”
Note:
[1] The bold text in this chapter comes from W.B. Yeats’s poem “Leda and the Swan,” translated by Yu Guangzhong.
[2] Regarding the wine mentioned in this article:
Albarino (阿尔巴利诺, this word is the Spanish spelling; in English it is Albarino) is actually the main white grape variety of the Rias Baixas region in Galicia province in northwestern Spain. It is generally recognized that the wine made from this grape is the best white wine in Spain. However, wine made from this white grape is very high in acidity, and it is said that some people may find its taste hard to get used to.
[3] Pazo de San Mauro Winery is the southernmost winery in Rias Baixas.
[4] Under the Spanish classification system, the bottle of wine mentioned in the text is a Vin Joven-level white wine—that is, an “ordinary wine/new wine” released within one to two years after brewing. This grade of white wine is generally not aged in oak barrels after brewing, so it is not as mellow as other wines, but its fruit flavor is very full.
Because this kind of wine is suitable for drinking young—that is, the sooner it is drunk after sale, the better, since aging will cause it to lose its fruit flavor—it is sold relatively widely in Spain locally.
[5] The “August Spanish Wine Festival” refers to International Albarino Day, generally held on August 1st.