Night Work (15 page)

A snapshot of himself with Frau Bender. He was sitting on her lap with one arm around her waist, laughing. She was smoking a cigarette. On the table in front of her, a glass of wine with the bottle and a vase of wilting flowers beside it.

He couldn’t remember her drinking. A child wouldn’t have noticed such a thing, presumably, but it didn’t fit in with the image he still had of her. She lived on in his memory as a friendly, well-groomed old lady. Far from looking
friendly, the woman in the photograph was glaring at the camera. Frau Bender didn’t look very well-groomed, either – quite unlike his idea of a lady. She looked like a slovenly old hag. All the same, he’d been fond of her then and he still was.

Hello, old girl, he thought. So remote.

While studying this dusty snapshot of his parents’ former neighbour he recalled her favourite pastime: dangling a weight over photographs, preferably those dating from the war, to see if the people in them were still alive. Meanwhile, she would reminisce to Jonas about the people in question.

He shut his eyes and pressed his forefinger against the bridge of his nose, trying to remember. If the weight swung to and fro it meant
alive
, if it moved in a circle,
dead
. Or was it the other way round? No, that was right.

Jonas slipped off the ring Marie had given him and opened the catch of the silver chain he wore around his neck. He threaded the ring onto it and tried to close the catch again. His trembling fingers made this difficult, but he finally succeeded.

Having improvised a table out of a stack of boxes, he turned on the torch and hung it on a hook. Then he placed the photograph on the topmost box and dangled the chain and ring over his face in the picture. His arm was too unsteady, so he had to support it.

The ring hung motionless.

It started to swing slightly.

The swinging increased.

The ring swung to and fro in a straight line.

Jonas looked around. He went out into the passage. In the light of his torch, a thick skein of dust cast a restless shadow on the wall. The tap was dripping incessantly. The air smelt strongly of the insulating material, but the smell of oil had disappeared altogether.

‘Come on out now,’ he called gently.

He waited a moment before going back into the compartment. He stretched out his hand again, this time over Frau Bender’s face. He rested his elbow on the carton and supported his forearm with his free hand.

The ring hung motionless over the photo. Then it started to shake, to swing. The swinging increased. It moved in a circle. A definite circle.

How often Frau Bender had done the same thing. How often she had sat over photos of people and pronounced them dead. And now he was doing it over a picture of her, and she was beside him no longer. She’d been dead for fifteen years or more.

He reached into a box and brought out a handful of snaps. Himself with a school satchel. With a scooter. In a field with a badminton racket. With some playmates.

He studied the last picture. Four boys, one of them himself, playing in the backyard now filled with the Kästner family’s junk. Some sticks shoved in the ground, a little coloured ball, in the background a plastic tub of water with objects floating in it.

Jonas placed the photo on his makeshift table. He held out his arm and dangled the ring over his face. It started to swing evenly, back and forth. He held the ring over one of the boys, Leonhard.

He stared at the chain.

The light in the passage went out, leaving the box dimly illuminated by his torch. He shut his eyes and forced himself to remain calm.

The ring didn’t stir.

He withdrew his hand and shook his arm to relax it. Removing the torch from the hook, he picked up his gun and stomped out into the passage.

‘Hey!’ he called. ‘Hey, hey, hey!’

He switched on the passage light and turned on the
spot. After standing there for several seconds, he went back into the compartment.

He repeated the experiment. Over himself the ring swung to and fro. Over Leonhard, nothing.

He dangled the ring over the third boy and waited, trying to remember his name.

The ring didn’t move.

What nonsense it all is, he thought.

He fiddled with the catch, intending to remove the ring from the chain. Then, on impulse, he put out his arm again and held the ring over the picture of the fourth boy, Ingo.

It quivered and started to swing.

To move in a circle.

He repeated all four experiments. Over himself the ring swung to and fro, over Ingo it moved in a circle, over Leon-hard and the nameless boy it remained motionless.

He pushed the photograph aside and reached for the pile he’d left on the edge of his table of boxes.

Himself in the backyard in bathing trunks. Himself with a trophy he certainly hadn’t won. Himself with two ski poles. Himself in front of an enormous Coca-Cola hoarding. Himself with his mother outside his primary school.

He laid the photo down, stretched out his arm and dangled the ring over his own picture.

The ring briefly moved in a circle, probably because he hadn’t kept his arm steady enough, then went back into the usual pendulum motion.

He held it over his mother’s face.

It hung motionless, then moved in a circle.

Photos of himself with his mother, of himself with a football, of himself with a tomahawk and feathered headdress. Of his mother on her own, of his mother in hiking gear. Of his grandmother, who had died in 1982. Of two men he didn’t remember.

He held the ring over them. It moved in a circle both times, just as it had over his grandmother’s picture.

Photos of Kanzelstein. Himself with his mother in the garden, picking sorrel. Himself in a field with bow and arrow. Himself at the wheel of Uncle Reinhard’s VW Beetle. Himself at the ping-pong table, which came up to his chest.

Finally, a photo of himself with a man whose head had been cropped by the upper margin of the picture. He laid it down on the table.

Above his own face the ring swung to and fro.

Above the picture of the man beside him it remained motionless.

That might have been because the head wasn’t shown. Hurriedly, Jonas looked through the pile until he found a photo that showed his father’s face as well. He repeated the experiment.

The ring didn’t move.

Hungry and exhausted, Jonas flopped down on the mattress and draped the ragged blanket he’d fetched from the truck over his feet. He hadn’t noticed the time, and it was already dark. He had avoided being outside after dark ever since his trip to the Mondsee. In view of the feeling of uneasiness that had come over him on the Brigittenauer embankment, he had no desire to go home at this hour.

He cleared his throat. The sound echoed around the empty flat.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said aloud, and turned on his side.

Lying within reach on the floor, which was littered with scraps of paper and crumpled balls of sticky tape, was a box of photographs he’d brought up from the cellar.
He took out a batch of them. They hadn’t been sorted. Photos from different decades were mixed up together. Ten snaps displayed five different locations, two black-and-white photos followed three in colour, and the next pictures dated from the late 1950s. In one he was tugging at the bars of his playpen, in the next he was being confirmed.

He studied a photograph of himself taken a week after his birth, according to the inscription on the back. He was lying, wrapped in a blanket, on his parents’ bed. The bed he was lying on at that very moment. Only his head and hands were visible.

That bald creature was him.

That was his nose.

Those were his ears.

That pinched little face was his.

He peered at the tiny hands. He held his right hand in front of his face and looked at the right hand in the picture.

It was the same hand.

The hand he could see in the photo would learn to write, first with a pencil, then with a fountain pen. Nearly thirty years ago the hand in front of his face had learnt to write, first with a pencil, then with a fountain pen. The hand in the photo would stroke the cats that wandered over from their next-door neighbour in Kanzelstein, take hold of the old wood-carver’s ornamental walking stick, play cards. The hand in front of his face had stroked the cats in Kanzelstein, taken hold of that walking stick and played cards. The little hand in the photo would some day design interiors with a ruler and compasses, type on a computer keyboard, light someone’s cigarette. The hand in front of his face had signed contracts, moved chessmen, sliced onions with a kitchen knife.

The hand in the photo would grow, grow, grow.

The hand in front of his face had grown.

He kicked off the blanket and went to the window. The street lights weren’t on. He had to press his forehead and nose against the pane to make out the shapes outside.

The Spider was parked in the street with the truck in front of it. The tailboard was down. It hadn’t looked like rain.

He tiptoed back to the bed. The carpet felt rough beneath his feet.

Jonas sat up with a start and looked round. To his relief, he discovered that everything wasn’t red.

Extricating his feet from the ragged blanket, he sank back on the mattress. He stared at the opposite wall. A pale rectangle marked the spot where he’d removed a watercolour. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. They made another circuit of the room. All the colours were normal.

He couldn’t remember the dream in detail. Only that he’d been striding through a big building in which everything, walls and floors and objects, was a rich, luminous red. The various shades of red differed only slightly, creating the impression that things were dissolving and merging into one another. He had wandered through this building, in which no sound could be heard, encountering nothing but colour, the colour red. It even dictated the shape of things.

He threw the mattresses out of the window. The first row of slats he wrenched out of the bedstead offered considerable resistance. The second proved less difficult. He trundled both into the street on the trolley and stowed them in the back of the truck beside the mattresses. Taking the handsaw he’d obtained from the DIY store, he set to work
on the bedstead itself. It took him nearly an hour, but then it was done. He stacked the pieces of the bed on the trolley, wheeled them outside and loaded them into the truck.

He made a final tour of inspection. The kitchen cabinets were unfamiliar, they hadn’t been in his parents’ home, so they stayed where they were. Likewise the kitchen stove, fridge and bench. He’d cleared out all the other possessions. Last of all he took the box of photographs and put it in the Spider’s boot.

He perched on the rear end of the truck and looked up at the sky. He had a sense of déjà vu. It was as if the few open windows had only just been opened. The stone figures projecting from the walls seemed to be watching him. One in particular, a knight in chain mail brandishing a sword from behind a shield emblazoned with a fish, was regarding him with scorn. All this he’d experienced before.

Moments later everything was normal again. The windows had long been open. The statues were merely statues. The swordsman stared down with indifference.

Jonas swung round.

He clambered onto the roof of the cab and looked up and down the street. Nothing had changed in the last four weeks. Not the smallest detail. The piece of plastic over the bicycle saddle still fluttered in every breath of wind. The bottle still protruded from the dustbin. The mopeds were still in their usual places.

He swung round again.

He fetched some paper and sticky tape from the cab, together with the marker pen which he’d got from he couldn’t remember where. He stuck a note on the door of the building, where anyone coming back would see it at once.

Come home. Jonas
.

After a moment’s thought he attached another sheet of paper bearing the same message to the inside of the door as well.

Jonas drove the truck back to Hollandstrasse. Under a blistering sun he cycled back to Rüdigergasse, where he picked up the Spider and drove it to the Brigittenauer embankment. He had a headache. He blamed it on the sawdust he must have inhaled when dismembering the bed, but it might also have been the heat.

It occurred to him, as he removed the photos from the Spider, that he’d forgotten to clear out the cellar. That annoyed him. He hadn’t wanted to set foot in the Rüdigergasse flat again. Now he would have to go back there tomorrow.

He opened the front door and listened. Closed it behind him and locked it. Stood there, straining his ears and peering round. Everything looked as it had when he left the building the day before. When he opened and closed the door, flyers went fluttering across the floor. Lying in the corner was a toy that had belonged to a neighbour’s Alsatian, a well-chewed tennis ball. The lift was on the ground floor, the air laden with the musty smell of damp plaster.

Cautiously, he opened the door of his flat. He searched all the rooms, then locked the door. He put the shotgun down and tossed the photos onto the sofa. He didn’t feel he’d been imagining things the day before. Something had been different from usual. Although appearances were against it and indicated an overactive imagination.

When he shampooed his hair he avoided shutting his eyes until the foam made them smart. He held his face under the shower and wiped the foam away with nervous little movements. His heart beat faster.

For some time now, Jonas had had to contend with an uninvited guest whenever he closed his eyes in the shower. The beast came into his mind on this occasion too. Walking upright on two legs, it was a shaggy creature over two metres tall, a cross between a wolf and a bear, and he knew
that its fur concealed something far more intimidating. Every time he shut his eyes he felt overcome with fear of this creature, which came prancing up and threatened him. It moved much faster than a man – faster, too, than any animal he knew. It bounded in, rattled the door of the shower cubicle and tried to pounce on him. But it never got that far because he opened his eyes just in time.

Hearing a rustling sound in the corner, Jonas looked round, yelled and dashed out into the passage. With shampoo in his hair and foam over his naked body, he stood peering back into the bathroom.

‘Oh, no you don’t! Ha, ha!’

He dried himself on a towel from the cupboard in the bedroom. But what about all that shampoo in his hair? He paced irresolutely to and fro between the kitchen sink and the shoe cupboard in the passage without crossing the bathroom threshold.

He was being silly. A rustling sound. That was all. And the wolf-bear creature existed only in his imagination. He could take a shower with his eyes shut, no trouble. No one was threatening him.

The door was locked.

The windows were closed.

No one was hiding in the wardrobe or lurking under the bed.

No one was clinging to the ceiling.

He went back into the cubicle and turned on the tap, held his head under the shower. Shut his eyes.

He guffawed. ‘Hey! Ha, ha! There! You see? I told you! Hallelujah!’

It was getting dark outside when he sat down on the living-room floor, wrapped in a bathrobe, and rested his back
against the sofa. He smelt of shower gel and was feeling refreshed.

He put the photos on the carpet in front of him.

Ingo Lüscher.

He’d been trying the whole time, at the back of his mind, to recall the full name of the boy above whom the ring had moved in a circle. He had also been pondering the name of the unknown boy. At least he’d remembered Ingo’s surname. They’d teased him, saying he shared the name of a Swiss downhill skier, which had naturally annoyed a patriotic sports fan like Ingo. Jonas hadn’t seen him since primary school. He hadn’t lost sight of Leonhard, on the other hand, until they were put in different classes when they started secondary school.

His thoughts strayed back to his pendulum experiments in the cellar. In principle, he considered such things nonsense, although he had to admit that the results were remarkable. Had he influenced the pendulum without meaning to? His mother was dead and his father had disappeared. He knew this, so he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that his subconscious had guided the chain.

He opened the catch, threaded the ring back onto the chain and dangled it over the first snap he came to. It was one of himself trailing a tennis racket far too big for him across a stretch of grass.

The ring hung motionless.

Started to swing.

Started to move in a circle.

Jonas let out an oath and rubbed his arm. He repeated the experiment. With the same result.

He found a picture of his mother. The ring moved in a circle above her this time too. Above his father, on the other hand, it started to swing after remaining motionless for some time. Above Leonhard it moved in a circle, above Ingo it swung gently to and fro, above the unidentified boy
it didn’t move at all. The next time he held the ring above a photo of himself it hung motionless above the box with the crumpled corners.

He was getting inconsistent results.

They were the results he’d expected of such hocus-pocus before he tried it out in the cellar. He ought to be glad. It was a graphic demonstration of how meaningless his experiments at Rüdigergasse had been. But he was more confused than ever.

He hurried into the bedroom and pulled Marie’s shoebox of photos from under the wardrobe. They were recent pictures taken with a single-lens reflex camera, none more than four years old. Most were of Jonas himself. In summer in bathing trunks and flippers, in winter in anorak, bobble hat and boots. He pushed them aside.

Photos showing him with Marie. They were taken from too far away. He put them to one side.

A large close-up of Marie’s face, one he wasn’t familiar with.

He held his breath. He was seeing her for the first time since she’d planted a kiss on his lips on the morning of 3 July and run, stumbling, out of the door because the taxi was waiting. He’d often thought of her since then and pictured her face, but he’d never seen it.

She was smiling at him. He looked into her blue eyes, which were observing him with a mixture of derision and affection. Her expression seemed to say: Don’t worry, it’ll all come right in the end.

That was how she’d been, how he’d known her, how he’d fallen in love with her at a friend’s birthday party. That look was her. So optimistic. Challenging, endearing, smart. And brave. Don’t. Worry. Everything’s. Fine.

Her hair.

Jonas recalled the last time he’d stroked it. He imagined the feel of it, imagined holding her close. Resting his
chin on her head, inhaling her fragrance. Feeling her body against his.

Hearing her voice.

He saw her doing her hair in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and looking over her shoulder as she told him the latest gossip from work. Standing at the stove frying her Catalonian courgettes, which were always a bit overseasoned. Swearing at CDs that had been put in the wrong sleeves. Slurping hot milk and honey on the sofa at night and commenting on what was on TV. Lying there, when he tiptoed into the bedroom two hours after her. With the book that had slipped from her hand beside her and one arm draped over her eyes to shield them from the bedside light.

For years he had taken all this for granted. It was simply the way things were: Marie was at his side, where he could hear, smell, feel her. Whenever she went away she returned a few days later and lay beside him once more. It had been the most natural thing in the world.

Not any more, though. Now he merely came across an odd stocking of hers, or picked up a bottle of nail varnish, or discovered one of her blouses hiding at the bottom of the laundry basket.

He went into the kitchen and pictured her standing there, clattering saucepans and drinking white wine.

Don’t worry.

Everything’s fine.

Jonas lay down on the floor beside the sofa with her photo in front of him. He twisted the ring between his fingers, feeling cold and nauseous.

He flung the chain aside.

After a while he stretched out his arm as if the ring were still in his hand. He swung an imaginary pendulum to and fro, then pulled back his arm.

He opened the window and breathed deeply.

He took the photo back into the next room and tossed it into the shoebox without looking at it again. Removing the tape from the camera in the bedroom, he put it in the one connected to the TV and rewound it.

He looked out of the window. Many of the lights that had been on for the first few weeks had gone out. If it went on like this, he would soon be looking out into darkness. And if he didn’t like that, he could always call in at selected flats during the day and turn on all the lights. That would enable him to postpone the night when darkness would take over. It would come in the end, though.

The window of the flat he’d visited after that nightmare was still lit up. On the other hand, many of the street lights that were on now had been off for the first few days. In other streets the lights came on one night and were off the next. Many thoroughfares were unlit every night, one of them being the Brigittenauer embankment.

Jonas shut the window. When he glanced at the blue TV screen, his stomach clenched. He had programmed the video camera with the timer. He might well have to listen to the Sleeper snoring for three whole hours. Equally, he might see something else.

Snoring would be preferable.

He went into the kitchen and drank a glass of port. He felt like another but put the bottle away. He emptied the dishwasher, although there wasn’t much in it. The cardboard boxes containing the video cameras had already been flattened. He gathered them up, dumped them in a neighbouring flat and locked the door again.

Never mind, he thought, as he reached for the remote.

The Sleeper lay there, staring at the camera.

Jonas couldn’t see what time it was because the alarm
clock had fallen over. He’d forgotten what time he’d set the timer for: 1 a.m., he seemed to recall.

The Sleeper was lying on the edge of the bed, on his side, with his head propped on his hand. Hoodless this time, he was staring intently at the camera. Now and then he blinked, but mechanically and without averting his gaze. His face remained immobile. He didn’t move an arm or a leg, nor did he toss and turn. He simply lay there, looking at the camera.

After ten minutes Jonas felt he couldn’t stand that piercing gaze any longer. He didn’t understand how anyone could lie there like a statue for so long. Without scratching, without sniffing, without clearing his throat or adjusting his position.

After a quarter of an hour he took to shielding his eyes like a cinemagoer when some gruesome scene is being shown. Occasionally he peeped at the screen through his fingers, only to see the same thing.

The Sleeper.

Staring at him.

Jonas couldn’t interpret the look in those eyes. He saw no hint of kindliness or friendliness. Nothing that might have inspired confidence or conveyed intimacy. But he also saw no anger or hatred. Not even dislike. The expression was one of cool, calm condescension and a sort of emptiness that clearly related to himself. It became so intense that he noticed he was displaying signs of mounting hysteria.