Bluebeard : a tale
Felix Schaad, a doctor, stands accused of strangling a call girl -- his sixth wife. He has no alibi. But neither is there evidence pointing to his guilt, and he is acquitted. Schaad's waiting room, once crowded, is now empty. Now he has time: time to play billiards, feed swans, walk. Walking releases his thoughts, clarifies, confuses, embellishes, creates labyrinths. Schaad relives the testimony of his courtroom trial -- the accounts of friends and former wives. And he adds depositions of those long dead, including his mother and father. The truth and nothing but the truth. But where is the line between guilt and innocence, between damnation and redemption? Can anything ease the mind of a man who doesn't know what guilt signifies? Bluebeard is a shattering portrait of a man on trial in a court of law and in his own mind. A delicate concept built with precision into a dramatic and absorbing story
Print Book, English, 1984, ©1983
1st Harvest/HBJ ed
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego, Calif., 1984, ©1983