Chapter 45

Chapter 45: Dionysus in the Grave 03
“I don’t understand,” Albanino said.
—They sat at the bow of the boat, golden sunlight shattering into dazzling fragments on the water’s surface, while milky-white mist still lingered in the depths of the lake. Shana Bax sat there, one hand resting on the oar, a rather gentle smile on her face.
Many years later, people would also see such a smile on Albanino’s own face. He would wear this expression toward his colleagues or the victims who came to the forensic bureau for injury assessment, making them believe they were truly being cared for.
And Shana’s fingers gently smoothed the curled hair at her young son’s temples—her own hair was very light, smooth, satin-like gold, her skin fair, displaying the distinctive features of a northern Spanish ethnicity.
Her colleagues at the hospital would say the child looked more like his father, but Shana knew that at their core they were so very similar.
“You don’t need to understand now. You still have plenty of time to figure these things out, Al,” she said, her fingers sliding down along the young man’s cheekbone. “The most important thing you need to know is this: you are free. You are not overshadowed by your father or by me. You can choose to become someone like your father, or someone like me, or simply do whatever you want to do.”
Albanino said in a low voice, “I feel a kind of craving—”
“Then follow the craving.” Shana said decisively. She was still smiling as she spoke, and that expression made her look very young. “But there’s no need to rush. You have endless time, and—whatever you do, don’t start this rashly. You don’t need to imitate me, or any of the cases that came before. You need to choose the method that suits you.”
“I know!” Albanino raised his voice slightly, and there was a trace of agitation in it. “But what is the method that suits me?”
“Feel it with your heart,” Shana said, blinking at him cheerfully. “Remember when you were little, when we were in Paris, and I took you to see *The Raft of the Medusa*? What did I tell you then, Al?”
“We can watch for as long as we want, and decide for ourselves when it ends.” Albarino answered in a low voice.
“Exactly. And it’s the same now.”
The smile at the corner of Shana’s mouth seemed to grow gentler. She leaned in and quickly kissed her son’s cheek—even though the boy was already old enough to feel a bit awkward about such displays of affection—then withdrew the hand she had earlier placed on Albarino’s shoulder, stood up in the small boat, and kicked off the peep-toe shoes on her feet. The boat rocked unsteadily from her movements.
More droplets splashed up. Albarino remained seated where he was, tilting his head back to look at her. She was standing with her back to the rising sun, so her whole figure appeared almost like a blurry, dim silhouette. The wind lifted the gossamer fabric of the dress she wore, like churning blood mist.
Albanino said softly, “Mom—”
“We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?” she said gently. “I think now is that moment, Al.”
“I remember what we talked about before was ‘death,'” Albanino pointed out.
“We talked about it because it’s coming sooner or later, and as always, I want it to happen under my control—because beauty is so fleeting, especially for those who possess a mortal body.” Xana brushed aside a few strands of hair that the wind had blown across her cheek. Cleverly tucked into her hair was a cluster of meadowsweet blossoms, which she had pulled from the glass vase of flowers by the door before they left that morning. Albanino knew she loved to see his father’s helpless expression when he saw her do this again—she only did it for fun.
“Is this the most suitable moment?” Albanino asked.
“There is never a ‘most suitable’ moment. Just like the traveler in the fable who enters the orchard only to pick the single most perfect apple, we always feel that the next moment will be more suitable than the present.” Shana answered gently. “But isn’t choosing to end it now just fine?—We are still in our finest moment, and you need to step out of your parent’s shadow, especially mine. Though I don’t want to boast, you seem quite susceptible to my influence, Al.”
Albanino seemed to want to protest, or perhaps sigh. He muttered a few small words to himself, then admitted, “You’re right.”
Shana let out a soft laugh. “So come here, darling. Feel it with your heart, and decide for yourself when to end it—Al, if you want to figure out what your most desired method is, you must first witness ‘death.'”
“It’s not a beautiful thing, it’s ugly,” Albanino muttered, though he obediently shifted a little closer to the bow of the boat. “I’ve been to the morgue at my father’s hospital.”
“Most of the time, that is indeed the case, but it still has its merits: it is an indispensable part of a great journey,” Shana agreed, and as she spoke, the golden light of the newly risen sun grew ever more brilliant behind her, brushing a layer of golden-pink halo onto her skin.
But Albanino still frowned: “But…”
“I understand why you feel so restless and unsettled. We’re often unwilling to walk a road alone—that goes for both you and your father—but it is nonetheless essential.” Shana spoke softly. “Think back to that fairy tale I used to love reading to you. Bury your Psyche at the bottom of a dry well, and then return to reality. Give her a brief funeral eulogy: ‘Go away, get out!’—and then you will be free.”
“That’s not a very good metaphor,” Albanino said quietly.
“Yes, but of course I speak to people in metaphors, you know that.” Shana’s voice carried plenty of teasing, as always, along with a touch of arrogance that was uniquely hers—though if anyone else overheard such words, they would surely come across as far too arrogant.
Albanino answered this little joke with a tense smile, while his mother gazed at him, her eyes a beautiful mint green. She tilted her head nimbly to one side, a gesture that brought a swan to mind.
She said softly, “I love you, child.”
Then she spread her arms in the morning light, framed by the backlight and dawn clouds into a silhouette rich with metaphor: it looked almost like a slender cross; the strong wind carried to them the moisture and the bitter scent of earth from the riverbank at dawn, and once or twice a bird’s call emerged from the mist.
—And then her body fell.
A long time later, that spiraea blossom floated up to the surface along with the foam.
What exactly was that flame that sometimes flickered to life within him? What was that fountain of sin that flowed ceaselessly against his will? He blamed his body, but the sin flowed out from within his heart. A part of his spirit was soft like a serpent, coiled into a ball, hiding alongside his conscience beneath the cloak of universal love—what exactly was that? Could it be that some childish or youthful frivolity was at work, placing himself beneath God’s mercy, believing that he would thereby be elevated, rising above all the people of the world?
On Saturday afternoon, near dusk, Albanino brought many flowers back to the wooden cabin, along with some satin.
Many, many flowers: a great quantity of pale pink hibiscus and tulips, arranged in green floral foam made of phenolic plastic; some plants that Hestal confirmed were red poppies; fragile light blue hydrangeas, carefully wrapped in paper; bundles of blue pickerelweed, almost as numerous as the hydrangeas; and another kind of pale blue plant from the iris family, which Albanino said was actually saffron crocus—Hestal could hardly be blamed for not recognizing it, since the most he knew about this plant was that he had eaten it when it was used as a spice.
These flowers were all light blue and pale pink, with only the poppies being slightly deeper in color, and the overall color scheme was quite bright and cheerful. The satin that Albanino brought back was similar in color to those hydrangeas, and as Hestal ran through the drafts in Albanino’s notebook in his mind, he roughly understood what Albanino was planning to do.
Albarino clearly knew that he understood, so he cut straight to the point and asked, “How is it?”
Dark circles hung under his eyes—of course they would, for someone who had stayed up all night. Although it was unclear whether he had actually rested during the day on Friday, from the time Hestal got off work in the evening until now, he hadn’t slept a single second in nearly twenty-four hours. But those bluish patches of skin and the bloodshot veins in his eyes clearly did not move Hestal to show him any mercy.
“You chose these colors of flowers?” Hestal asked. “Truly frivolous color coordination.”
“Ah, yes, yes, a cold-blooded dismemberment serial killer would of course say that.” Albarino set the last foam box containing flowers wobblingly on the ground and straightened up. “I’m certainly not the type to arrange a bloody living person into Michelangelo’s *The Creation of Adam*.”
Of course, if the Sunday Gardener were to do a piece based on *The Creation of Adam*, he would most likely clean up the bloodstains first—that is the difference between the two of them.
“Artemisia was a Baroque artist. Her works would never carry this cloying, delicate style.” Hestal insisted, his tone as if those flowers had personally offended him.
“So you’re really not happy about the Gardener decorating corpses with flowers, huh? Sorry about that—the serial killer who’s got his eye on you happens to favor Boucher and Fragonard.” Albanino clicked his tongue.
He finally stood at the center of the room—where the two corpses had essentially been arranged, their bones and limbs fixed in place with metal, posed in the exact forms Albanino had wanted them to take. Of course, some parts could still be disassembled; otherwise, no SUV trunk could possibly fit something of that size.
Albanino looked at the two corpses, his gaze entirely focused. It went without saying that Anthony Sharp was reduced to nothing but sparse bones and limbs stripped of skin, but the livor mortis on Billy’s body and the filthy green blood vessels formed during decomposition were somewhat unsightly. In the end, he would still have to find some way to use the materials on hand to cover these things up.
Hestal clearly also realized that standing in front of two corpses discussing artistic style with him was not only meaningless but also carried a flavor of dark humor. He gave up and instead asked, “Where did you get these flowers?”
There was no way Albanino could have bought flowers for normal reasons. If he bought flowers in large quantities for no apparent reason, and the cycle matched the Sunday Gardener’s crime cycle, he would have been caught by Hardy long ago.
“On paper, there’s a studio—one that designs ceramics, metal, and glassware, vases and decorative plates and such. They frequently purchase flowers from wholesalers.” Albanino said in a low voice, his gaze never turning away from the corpses. “To take promotional photos of vases for their website, to decorate the merchandise in their physical store, or to send to various design competitions. When the flower wholesaler files taxes, it shows these flowers were purchased by that studio rather than an individual. Of course, if you’d like, I can also send you the URL of that studio’s official website.”
Hestal said nothing, but Albanino knew the other was still gazing at him.
He crouched on the ground, picking through the hibiscus flowers. He had maintained a sufficient posture for far too long over the past twenty-plus hours, and now his legs ached dully, but Albanino did not particularly care. He asked lightly, “What? After lecturing me about doing whatever I please, are you surprised I’d make this kind of arrangement?”
Not entirely. Looking at this fully equipped wooden cabin, one could tell he wasn’t acting entirely on whim. Several thoughts circled in Hestal’s mind, and he cautiously picked one to ask: “Did your mother teach you this?”
“What? No!” Albanino laughed in surprise, his laughter sounding almost hearty. “She taught me nothing—except death itself.”
As he spoke, he didn’t pause in his movements at all, deftly tucking the hibiscus flowers into the empty spaces between Sharpe’s ribs, carefully adjusting each one’s position to make sure they weren’t too crowded, that no flower accidentally ended up face-down, and that their arrangement didn’t look too stiff.
Some people even think that the Sunday Gardener’s flowers are just randomly arranged. Hestal clicked his tongue deep down inside.
Hestal didn’t know if he should speak up and urge the other to continue, and he didn’t know if Albanino truly cared about his mother’s death—which was rather ridiculous. The other had roughly torn his wound open, leaving it bloody and raw, yet when he asked Albanino, he was still agonizing over matters of politeness. But then again, this was precisely what made them different.
“Did she really die by suicide?” In the end, Hestal still asked.
“In front of me, I watched her sink, and in the end, I was the one who called the police.” Albanino said simply, pulling another hibiscus from the floral foam and snipping its stem with a crisp click of the scissors. “If that’s what you wanted to ask—yes, I did nothing.”
Hestal furrowed his brow slightly: “Why?”
Albanino shrugged, his voice light: “Because she wanted it that way—choosing her own preferred method of death after a fulfilling life, having killed enough people without getting caught by the police? I suppose that was part of her life’s goal. I don’t entirely agree with it, but I don’t stop her from choosing what she wants, just as she wouldn’t stop me from making my own choices.”
“But even if your father—” Suicide.
“My father didn’t die entirely because of her passing,” Albarino answered.
He placed another cotton rose, then pulled a red poppy from the bouquet beside him and stood up, hissing through his teeth at the numbness in his legs. Then he looked at Hestal, a strange shadow lingering in his eyes.
Then he said, “It was the result of many things combined: because of her death, the suicide note she left behind—my father never really mentioned it, but I believe something like that existed, and from what I know of her, she very likely laid out in that letter the fact that she had killed at least fifty-three patients—and also his guilt over his own failure to notice.”
Albarino paused briefly.
“Perhaps there might be one more thing,” he whispered, revealing a smile, “I resemble her a great deal, and that might have made my father want to escape from what was ultimately bound to happen.”
Hestal was silent for a brief moment, then remarked, “It sounds as though she ultimately killed him.”
“‘Be true’—isn’t that precisely the essence of marriage?” Albanino let out a light laugh. “In the legal sense, she truly did nothing; but it was the long-term depression and remorse that slowly killed him, so perhaps that’s not wrong to say.”
“And you? How do you feel about all of this?” Hestal asked.
“Are we back to this part again? The part where we discuss ‘Does the Sunday Gardener really have a heart?'” There was still a trembling laugh in Albanino’s voice, which at a moment like this sounded almost inhuman. He took a step forward, nearly pressing against Hestal’s body. He was still holding that bright red poppy in his hand, looking as though it were a pool of fresh blood.
“Shouldn’t I be worried?” Hestal retorted.
“You should.” Albanino’s voice dropped to something like a whisper. “Because I don’t feel anything.”
—Hestal stared at him.
“When my mother had just passed away, my father’s mental state was in a terrible condition.” Albanino continued, “I had to handle most of the funeral arrangements—you know the rest. Within two years, two funerals. Their colleagues at the hospital praised me for being calm and strong, but no one ever saw through to the essence of things. And at the time, the pastor of the Westland parish even refused to preside over both of their funerals.”
“Because they stubbornly believed that suicides cannot enter heaven.” Hestal let out a scoff, which brought back memories of the Catholic church in Kentucky—not a pleasant memory by any means.
“Girls from the plains are also very beautiful, no less so than princesses in marble palaces. They are all daughters of Eve, with no distinction whatsoever in the kingdom of heaven.” Albanino said cheerfully.
Hestal glanced at him: “What is that?”
“The fairy tale my mother loved to tell me when I was little, Andersen’s.” Albarino shrugged, his breath brushing against Hestal’s lips—this social distance was truly very impolite. When had Hestal given up on trying to stop him? “It’s about a young artist who sculpts a Psyche statue using the woman he deeply loves as his model, but the lady cruelly rejects his courtship, so he buries the marble statue deep in a dried-up well.”
“That really doesn’t sound like a children’s bedtime story,” Hestal said. But then again, what right did he have to judge bedtime stories? No one had ever told him stories when he was a child.
“It’s said that Andersen got the inspiration from a news story about a Dionysus statue being dug up in a cemetery. My mother thought that kind of real event—the kind that actually happens in real life—was very romantic,” Albarino recalled.
He had worn that same expression when he recalled the story of his father and the white wine—pleasant, but nothing more than pleasant. His tone when talking about these things could easily make one mistake it for genuine nostalgia, but on closer thought, one would realize it was merely an illusion.
Hestal felt his throat seemed a little dry. He coughed and asked, “What about the ending of the story?”
“The artist died. He spent his entire life trying to escape Psyche, whom he had buried in the dry well, but in the end he knew that he had never escaped that which followed him like a shadow,” Albarino said softly. “I once wavered about my own future. My mother placed her hopes on witnessing scenes of death—death itself makes one vigilant. She hoped that through this I would find my own path, rather than walking the old road of imitating her—”
Hestal quickly recalled the news articles he had looked into, those police investigation reports, and then he understood completely.
“But it was precisely her who made you,” Hestal said slowly.
Albanino tucked the poppy into the buttonhole on the lapel of Hestal’s suit jacket, his fingers gently smoothing out the wrinkles in the fabric.
“The Psyche in my heart will never die,” Albanino replied softly.
Note:
[1] Albanino’s mother was named Xana. This name actually belongs to a maiden fairy from native Spanish mythology.
In mythological legends, a dragon named Cuélebre (it is a descendant of the Greek mythological dragon Ladon; due to Greek colonial influence, this figure also frequently appears in native Spanish mythology) fell in love with the maiden Xana: originally Xana faced the fate of being devoured by Cuélebre, but who would have known that this dragon was so utterly smitten that he proposed marriage to Xana. Xana used this as a condition, demanding that he never eat humans again, and he agreed. In the end, Cuélebre used his own magic to reincarnate himself as a fairy, though some say he transformed Xana into a fairy, and the two lived happily together ever after.
(↑The source of this annotation is Zhihu)
[2] “The Raft of the Medusa”: An oil painting by Théodore Géricault, housed in the Louvre.
[3] Let me explain that “I of course must speak to people in parables”—because as everyone knows, Jesus spoke to others in parables, and the reason Jesus gave for this was, “This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.”
(So if anyone else heard this, it would come across as far too arrogant.)
[4] Boucher and Fragonard were both famous Rococo painters, and Hestal despised them for being gaudy, flashy, and devoid of substance.