Chapter 38: Dance, Dance, My Doll 02
By the time Albarino returned to his seat, quite a few people’s gazes were still stuck to him. Hestal was familiar with that kind of look—shock, pity. That sort of empathy was precisely what the Westland Pianist lacked most.
After he stepped down, the woman with ginger-colored hair returned to the stage. She too seemed somewhat at a loss—clearly, no matter how many times Albarino had attended this kind of meeting before, he had never once gone up to speak.
The woman was on stage inviting the next person to share their story when Hestal’s phone buzzed softly. He unlocked the screen and saw the latest message pop up on the display:
“The photos came out really well.”
That’s what Albanino said.
Hestal sneered inwardly: he had always harbored some absurd fantasies—for instance, if Albanino were finally arrested one day, it was quite likely that his mental issues would be used as a defense—assuming he found a good enough lawyer, he might be sentenced to lifelong “rehabilitation” in a psychiatric hospital.
Hestal had seen too many murderers escape the electric chair on grounds of mental illness, some of the particularly famous ones even publishing their own autobiographies in prison or in the hospital. If Albanino ever sank to that point, he would certainly have his photo enlarged and printed on the cover of his book, because he was just that kind of goddamn egomaniac.
While he was thinking about all this nonsense, the next speaker had already taken the stage—a thin, frail black-haired boy who looked haggard, with deep shadows under his eyes.
He shuffled onto the stage, and when he sat down on the stool, his legs swung restlessly. He said in a small voice, “Hello, everyone. My name is Billy.”
Below, there was of course a scattered chorus of “Hello, Billy” greetings, and then this boy, who clearly looked underage, began to tell his story.
Certain things about him drew Halstall’s attention—perhaps it was the especially thin legs swinging within the empty pant legs, the purplish-blue shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes, or his hands: his clothes were clearly ill-fitting, so a section of his wrist was exposed at the cuff. Halstall had excellent eyesight, and the lighting in the small theater was bright enough for him to make out the crisscrossing scars on the young man’s wrist; judging by their color, they had been there for a long time.
And—especially—the young man’s face. There were clearly several scars on his chin, still quite new, uneven after healing. Halstall believed that was the shape left behind after bite marks had scarred over.
“Test cuts.” Hestal could recall Albanino’s voice, calm as a deep pool, on the night after he killed Bob Landon.
Certain qualities in this young man had caught Hestal’s attention, and when he realized exactly what it was that was drawing his notice, he suddenly felt irritated. This irritation came on fiercely, similar to the moment he finally drove the knife into Elliot Evans’s throat, similar to the moment he choked Albanino until the other suffocated, similar to the moment he hanged those two people in that small church in Kentucky.
He had to clench his fists to suppress this sudden restlessness.
At moments like this, Hestal often felt conflicted: because since he knew why he was irritated, he began to despise himself with particular intensity—despising his own lingering fragility, his foolish inability to accept certain facts; despising his inability to control his anger, humanity’s greatest enemy, especially when you’re a serial killer—you’ll always make some grave mistakes because you can’t control your anger.
And the young man continued to speak, his voice pained yet calm. He was saying: “…But I feel like he’s come back. These past few days, whenever I go out, I always feel like someone is following me. I’m even certain I saw him near the subway station. I keep trying to comfort myself, telling myself it’s just because I’m too nervous, that I’m hallucinating, but—”
This young man clearly came to this support group often. He glossed over his previous experiences, but most people still understood—it must be because he had already come up on stage to speak many times before.
Hestal listened for a while and quickly picked out the key points: the gist was probably that this young man had once attended a boarding school on the other side of the city, and during his time there had been stalked and harassed by a life counselor.
One night, this teacher had called Billy out of the dormitory and then attacked him. Billy glossed over this part vaguely, but from the scattered fragments, Hestal deduced that Billy had shouted loudly at the time and drawn the attention of other school staff, so the assault had not been carried out—but whether those bite-mark-like scars on his body had been left by that teacher, or whether Billy had also attempted self-harm on some day after the matter was over, was hard to say.
Hestal actually felt the whole thing was quite obvious.
In any case, because the assault had not actually occurred, or perhaps because something had happened during the court defense that Billy did not mention—Hestal, as a lawyer, could already think of four or five different scenarios—that teacher was not currently in prison. He had obviously lost his job, and the court had also issued a restraining order forbidding him from appearing anywhere near Billy.
Now this young man was recounting his suspicions of being followed with a face full of worry, and he seemed more inclined to believe that he had already become so nervous as to be on the verge of mental collapse. His voice trembled, and the unconsciously drawn-out endings of his sentences carried a faint hint of tears.
If one looked carefully at this haggard-faced boy, one might be able to deduce why that criminal had chosen him: although he was somewhat too thin and small, his face was actually very beautiful—a refined beauty of the kind seen in classical paintings of vigorous youths—and he had a pair of lake-like blue eyes.
“I love you more than all my sons.”
Hestal furrowed his brows.
“Hey! Hestal!”
By the time they finally got through several more people sharing their experiences, going through several psychology books under the facilitator’s guidance, and finally actually holding hands and reciting the Prayer of Brunir together, the support group meeting was finally declared over.
Hestal really wished he could slip away as fast as humanly possible, but that was obviously impossible—he had barely stepped out the door when Albanino caught up with him from behind.
In that moment, he felt that tingling urge in his fingers again, making him want to drive the knife in his pocket straight into Albanino’s chest, just to make him stop talking.
But he obviously couldn’t. Albarino walked quickly behind him and said, “You’re in a bad mood.”
“What makes you say that?” Hestal retorted.
“Reading your emotions is a very delicate discipline. After all, the expressions you’re willing to show people are far too few.” Albarino said lazily, “But I believe I’ve already achieved some success in this field.”
He really had the nerve to talk about “reading people’s emotions.” Why on earth had they sunk to the point of discussing emotional issues with a psychopath?
Hestal snorted through his nose, not particularly inclined to engage with him, only wanting to hurry to the parking lot. Albanino followed persistently behind him, continuing in that overly casual tone of voice: “I’m guessing it’s not my problem, is it?”
Hestal stopped abruptly, nearly causing Albanino—who couldn’t brake in time—to crash into him. He turned around furiously and demanded, “Where exactly did you get the idea that this isn’t your problem?!”
Although Hestal was someone who always wore a stern face, scaring quite a few interns at the firm into trembling with fear, honestly speaking, he rarely lost his temper. When losing your temper carelessly at work could result in being held in contempt of court, a person ought to be able to control their temper.
As it turned out, that restraint was nearly useless whenever Albanino was present.
“Let’s recall,” Albanino answered in a light tone, “the day I got out of the hospital, you came to my place to find me, and then we immediately went at it like a house on fire and rolled in the sheets; after that, you delivered some profound remarks about love, and right on the heels of that, you immediately left my place. No staying the night, not a single goodnight—and by the way, you never contacted me again, just like every other heartless bastard who pulls up his pants and walks away.”
When Albanino said these words, his voice was still relaxed, but he had needlessly raised the volume a little. He was certainly not the type to get angry over something like this—for God’s sake, this little lunatic was doing it purely to attract the attention of the passersby on the street.
—And when those passersby cast their gazes—loaded with particularly rich implications—upon Hestal, he even seemed to grow a bit happier.
Herstal grabbed Albanino’s elbow with a headache, and warned in a low voice: “Dr. Bacchus.”
“Oh, alright, I will forever remain silent about this, I won’t even need to swear on the Bible.” Albanino blinked cheerfully, then suddenly lowered his voice, and that smile rapidly disappeared from his face like water seeping into sand, “I understand what you’re worried about: you’re afraid that if things continue like this, one day you won’t be able to bring yourself to kill me—no, that description isn’t accurate, because you clearly have the willpower to kill anyone, don’t you?”
He paused briefly, then rephrased: “You’re worried that one day when you kill me, you’ll actually feel sad… That makes you feel like things are starting to slip beyond your control, so you chose to disappear.”
Albanino could feel Herstal’s fingers tightening slightly on his elbow. He leaned forward, his lips almost brushing Herstal’s earlobe, and blew out those words with a sticky, breathy sound.
He said affectionately, “Control freak.”
Herstal’s fingers suddenly loosened.
“How strange this is, Herstal.” Albanino said in a conversational tone, catching Herstal’s wrist with a backhand grip and pulling him toward a nearby sparsely populated alley. Herstal didn’t really want to stand by the roadside receiving the baptism of people’s gazes, so he could only follow his footsteps over.
As they walked, Albanino continued, “The Westland Pianist wouldn’t solve problems this way, would he? Because the best way to solve a problem is murder—this serial killer realized that from the very beginning. I don’t know whether he actually killed the person who caused him harm, but he at least killed two people related to that incident. In the many years that followed, he also killed many fellows who could sink him into those dark memories of the past. Some criminal psychologists believe that the Pianist’s killing behavior is the result of his childhood trauma—his madness drives him to commit crimes, and by killing these sinful people, he feels safe… But I’m afraid I can’t agree with that.”
He paused for a moment. Even though the two of them were walking one behind the other, Hestal could still hear that note of amusement in his voice.
They had already walked into the shadow between the buildings. Since the earth after the snow looked especially white, the shadows between the dazzling reflections of the sun seemed especially dark. The places the sunlight could not reach were even colder, and it was in that cold that Albanino released his wrist and turned to look at him.
Those mint-green eyes seemed almost faintly gray in the shadow, so cold, so sharp.
“Why don’t you kill me?” he asked, almost murmuring.
Hestal did not answer—because this question, though seemingly insane, struck directly at the core of everything. In the shadows, Albanino looked almost like a wolf, some exotic yet ferocious beast. The sharp smile still curved at the corner of his mouth, and with that smile he sliced through others’ souls.
“You know this very well: I will hurt you, just as those people have hurt you.” Albanino sighed softly. “The Sunday Gardener is a born psychopath. He lacks the capacity for empathy, and he has no ability to love. Since my genes restrict me from loving you as a human would—I will inevitably hurt you. The moment my interest in you finally collapses, everything will happen.”
—The moment the flame goes out.
Novelists would write the story this way: if a person’s line is “Why not kill me? I will inevitably hurt you,” then this is generally a heartbreaking love story, Romeo and Juliet style—the protagonists cannot end up together because of the gulf between their identities. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and so on.
But Albanino was not. When he said those words, it was almost provocative, as if he were observing an animal he had never seen before, luring it with prey, waiting with eager excitement for the moment it would take the bait. This curiosity was almost cruel, and it was precisely the root of Hestal’s hesitation.
“Why not kill me?” Albanino repeated. “Or is it that you really ate the apple with that forbidden joy?”
The next second—in truth, Hestal really hadn’t decided what to do, but clearly he no longer had the chance to think it over—the next second Albanino suddenly shoved him against the filthy wall of the alley, the rough bricks pressing hard against his back through his coat.
Albanino gripped his elbow with one hand and his shoulder with the other, pinning him there just like that, though not actually using much force. Hestal knew that if he wanted to break free, he could easily do so.
“That kind of pleasure is intense, isn’t it? Like heroin?” Albarino asked against his ear, his warm breath brushing damply over his skin. “Like doing something you know you shouldn’t: whether it’s killing someone for the first time, writing to the police for the first time, or brazenly displaying a corpse in public—we’re all dancing on the edge of a blade, touching the boundary of taboos we shouldn’t touch.”
“Including yourself,” Hestal said in a low voice, sounding as if his teeth were clenched.
“—Including myself, that’s how it should be for you.” Albarino answered with tolerance, his fingers moving upward, fingertips brushing across Hestal’s chin, touching the stubble beginning to emerge; Hestal tilted his head slightly to one side, but didn’t knock his hand away. “So think carefully, Pianist—what is it you’re searching for in me, and does it make you feel like you’ve found your home?”
He narrowed his eyes, slowly lifted Hestal’s chin with his fingers, then leaned in and licked his neck.
—There was a small, inconspicuous white scar on his neck, usually hard to see once a tie was knotted. But today, since he had only come to attend an anonymous support group meeting, he had for the first time ever gone without a tie. Albanino nuzzled past those loosened collar edges with the tip of his nose, then licked the old scar.
He could feel Hestal go rigid all over—the other man was clearly struggling against his own instincts with immense difficulty. But though he was strung taut, he still did not move, even though Albanino was certain the knife was placed somewhere he could reach with a single lift of his hand.
“You’re not truly angry about what I did today—not really, not at any point.” Albanino buried his head against his neck and mumbled, “You’re angry because of that boy named Billy—you saw something in him, and those things… stirred up some unpleasant memories, didn’t they?”
“Your speech is truly very impressive,” Hestal said ambiguously, and Albanino suspected he had indeed struck right at the heart of the matter.
To the Pianist, the pleasure this game brought him was just as immense as the pleasure of continuing his nightly side job—this conclusion was hardly surprising. Albanino remembered that night at his home, the look in Hestal’s eyes as he gripped that knife. What kind of passion could be produced by watching another serial killer who knew him inside and out submit beneath his body—Albanino could roughly imagine it, even though the consequences of such an act were almost fatal.
As for Hestal, he had already clearly reached the conclusion “If I don’t kill you now, someday I’ll fall in love with you,” yet he didn’t act on it, and instead simply chose to vanish without a trace—that in itself was hardly ordinary.
And that is precisely what makes a “taboo” a taboo.
Albanino’s teeth scraped across his Adam’s apple, and he could hear his heartbeat, loud as a drumroll. The pulse throbbed beneath his lips, like war, like being alive.
“As I said, I’ve already achieved some small success in this discipline,” Albanino answered in a whisper.
Note:
[1] Always remain silent:
It’s actually a reference to this: when a priest officiates a wedding, he usually says at the end of his address, “If anyone has any objection, speak now or forever hold your peace”—and that’s the moment when someone can burst into the church and shout, “I object to this marriage!”