The Hit of a Marksman

by Bertil Falk

conclusion

He was obviously very interested.

“The problem was that Cornelius fell in love with Mary,” I explained. “And when I say in love I mean madly in love. In my opinion his mind was totally clouded by love and he was prepared to do something about it. Even so, I don’t know why he did what he did. As you know, a surgeon’s hand must not shake. Neither should a good shot’s. And Cornelius turned out to be not only an excellent surgeon but also a very, very good marksman.”

“He was the one who shot, yes?”

“He was the one.”

“That’s what I read about in the newspaper,” the ex-minister said. “It was a short paragraph about a crime passionel in Kenya, but that paragraph was never followed up in the Swedish press. To use a phrase from Graham Greene, what was the end of the affair?”

“Well, Greene’s The End of the Affair is much more than a novel about a love affair and not at all about a crime passionel. It’s rather a Catholic thriller, as a matter of fact the only Christian thriller I’ve ever read, apart from the Gospels, of course.”

“You still read the Gospels? As a missionary you should know them by heart.”

“Sir,” I said reproachfully, and emphasizing every syllable, I continued, “I ... do ... read ... the ... Bible ... ev ...er ... y ... day!”

He took the hint and nodded with a smile.

“This drama in Kenya,” I went on, “was very different from a religious thriller. Though it turned out to have a very strange twist, it had nothing at all to do with faith or religion or doubting Thomas. Not that Cornelius was an unbeliever. He belonged to some Lutheran denomination and he always attended the morning and the evening prayers when I officiated.

“But as I said, the drama didn’t take place at the missionary station. It happened on their farm. And it happened in a very secular way on a very secular day. I think it was on a Wednesday, when Cornelius didn’t operate.”

“What happened then. Did George die? Did this Cornelius get away with it? Did he get what he wanted?” the ex-minister demanded.

He sounded as if some secret knowledge was hidden behind his questions, almost as if he knew the answers.

I replied, “The answer to all three questions is no, no, no. And if there was an affair at all, it was a very one-sided one. Mary was not at all interested in him. George survived, and here we touch on a strange thing that was revealed by this drama.

“You see, early that morning, Cornelius brought his sporting rifle and kept watch at the farmhouse under a jacaranda tree. I don’t know what had taken possession of him, but he was firmly resolved to get rid of his rival.”

“I thought you said it was love that had gotten into him?” the ex-minister protested.

“You know what I mean. Why didn’t he obey the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’? And his behavior showed that he ignored the consequences for his own part. He didn’t even try to hide his intention. God knows how he thought that he would get off. Maybe he didn’t care.

“Anyhow, when George came out on the porch to begin his work, Cornelius raised his rifle, aimed at George’s heart and fired. As the marksman he was, he hit the mark. George’s white shirt was colored red by his blood. He staggered on the porch and fell to the ground. I saw it happen. Many other people saw it happen.

“And Cornelius! Pleased with his feat he nodded to himself and walked away. Somebody called the police. They came and caught him at his place.”

“And George didn’t die?”

“He did NOT die. We brought him straightaway to the operation theatre and the native hospital personnel took care of him.”

“I see. They saved him. Of course, they did.”

He nodded as if he commented on something he already knew.

“But hear now,” I said. “During the interrogation of Cornelius, he was cocksure of having killed George. Nobody told him that George had survived. He didn’t realize that he had failed until he heard the indictment. He was not accused of murder. He was accused of attempted murder. At that he went berserk. It took four men to stop him. And that is just about the end of his part of the story.”

“You said that this story had a strange twist. What was that?”

The ex-minister did not look like someone suffering from insomnia any more. His eyes were keen and almost full of expectation. His red moustache quivered. And he sneezed.

“The twist has to do with why and how Cornelius got hold of the wrong end of the stick, so to speak,” I said. “He didn’t know, as none of us did, except for Mary and his mother, about George’s actual physical condition. It was found out when he was operated on. Cornelius had probably read about that condition in passing during his years of medical training, but he had no reason to suspect that George, or anyone else for that matter, suffered from that very rare particular condition. But when we got to know the fact, it explained why Cornelius didn’t kill George. He so to say hit the mark but missed the heart.”

“Now you talk in riddles!” the ex-minister exclaimed, but he did not look puzzled.

“To begin with, George was a twin. Secondly, he was left-handed. Thirdly, he often suffered from infections. Remember the mysterious statement, when Mary said that George didn’t have his heart in the right place?”

The ex-minister smiled.

“You mean that she meant it in a literal sense?”

“She certainly meant it literally. George was an identical twin. However, when it came to the sticking point, he was not as identical as you would think. He was identical with a twist. He suffered from situs inversus. It’s a very rare condition. His body was a reflected image of his twin brother’s body. He was not only left-handed. His heart was on the wrong side. And when it comes to the heart, the right side of the body is the wrong side.” I made a pause. “Come to think of it. Had George been interested in politics, he would probably have been a left-winger like you.”

The ex-minister grunted at my silly attempt to joke, but he did not protest. He struck his red moustache.

“To sum up,” I continued, “everything about George was the opposite way around. He was a living topsy-turvy. And situs inversus means that the cilia are immobile, which results in hypersensitivity when it comes to infections.”

“Of course.”

The ex-minister sneezed.

“Cornelius thought that he hit George’s heart, while he only punctured one of his lungs, which of course was bad enough, but it wasn’t fatal.”

We sat silent for a while. Then the ex-minister said, “I knew it.”

The cruiser passed between islands through narrow sounds. The land was so near that one could stretch out a hand and pick a leaf from the branches of the oaks and the birches growing on the cliffs. Not much was said until the cruiser called at the landing stage of his island. He seemed thoughtful and got to his feet.

“You know,” he said and sneezed again. “Very few people suffer from situs inversus. I myself am one of the few specimens around. But it never dawned on me that this invisible freak of nature actually could save a person’s life.” He made a pause. “But I always suspected that the victim of that crime passionel, I read about fifteen years ago, was George and my guess as to how he survived was right. Have a nice day.”

He turned his back to me and went ashore. For a moment I sat petrified with amazement. Then I got to my feet and was on the verge of screaming “How did you know George?” Then I realized that they had met — of course they had — and actually socialized twenty years ago when the then so-powerful minister visited our mission station in Kenya.

George had of course been sitting with him on the porch under a mosquito net in the evenings with a bottle of Bowmore between them and they must have discovered that they both belonged to that exclusive Topsy-Turvy Club.

And I suddenly remembered that the ex-minister actually had a brother, no less a twin brother than the director-general of a civil service department. The old fox had listened to my story, all along knowing the real-life, O. Henry ending of the drama. I felt stupid for a moment, then I shrugged my shoulders and smiled.

That afternoon I had a cup of Kashmir tea on my verandah, but for some reason I could not get the morning’s conversation out of my mind. I thought of Mary and George. What were they doing now? I put aside the book I had intended to read, for I found that I was not able to concentrate on Cicero. And a white-painted ferryboat swept past my house in the narrow gap between my island and the islet on the other side of the sound.