Night Work (28 page)

Jonas had a feeling that someone or something was nearby. Imagination, he told himself.

He turned off the torch. In the dark he stripped off his sodden clothes, unzipped the mosquito net and wrung them out beneath the awning. His shirt, trousers and socks he deposited on the other side of the tent and crawled, naked, into one of the sleeping bags. The other he used as a blanket. He turned his head and looked at the entrance, shivering.

While listening to the storm he wondered if there was higher ground nearby, or if he should be prepared for a
lightning strike. Moments later the interior of the tent was lit up, bright as day, by an electric flash. He shut his eyes and made his mind a blank. The ensuing clap of thunder came several seconds later than he’d expected.

He tossed and turned, teeth chattering, but he couldn’t relax. The thunderstorm gradually receded, but rain continued to lash the roof of the tent, soaking the field and churning up the puddles that had formed. The wind tugged so hard at the tent poles, Jonas more than once expected to be buried beneath folds of sodden canvas.

Was that someone running his hand over the tent’s outer skin? Were those footsteps he could hear? He sat up and peered out. Amorphous darkness. He couldn’t even see the motorbike.

‘Get lost!’

No footsteps. Only the wind.

Jonas lay down again.

He was lapsing into sleep. Everything was drifting away.

Voices? Could he hear voices?

Footsteps?

Who was coming?

He awoke because it was hot and stuffy. At first he didn’t recognise his surroundings. Then he realised that he was lying inside the tent and the sun had warmed it up.

He felt his trousers. They were still damp. He picked up his clothes and tossed them out of the tent without giving them a thought. Taking the camping stove and two tins with him, he went outside.

The sky was cloudless, but a stiff, cool breeze was blowing. The grass beneath his bare feet was still wet. He looked round. There were no buildings in sight.

From one of the rucksacks the campers had left beneath the awning he took a pair of trousers – he had to roll up the bottoms – and a T-shirt too tight for him across the shoulders. He also pulled on a jumper. The socks he found were too small, so he cut off the toes with a knife. The sandals were also too small, but they would do at a pinch.

He strolled around while the contents of the tins were heating up in a saucepan on the stove. Fifty metres away was a clump of trees. He sauntered in that direction, then thought for a moment and walked back. Something was bothering him.

He examined the motorbike.

Both tyres were flat.

He took a closer look at them.

They’d been slashed.

Jonas set off in search of some village or town. His eyelids kept drooping. He was so tired, he felt tempted to sink to the ground, out here in the open, and pillow his head on his hands.

He’d been walking for a good hour when he came to a house. A car was parked outside. The key wasn’t in the ignition, but the front door was unlocked.

Beyond it lay a dim passage, ‘
Hello?
’ he called in English. ‘
Somebody at home?
’

‘Of course not,’ he answered himself politely.

Without dwelling on the noises in the house, a dark old cottage full of creaking beams, Jonas looked round the rooms in search of the car keys. He quickly averted his gaze whenever he caught sight of a mirror. Sometimes, when he glimpsed himself moving in a mirror on a wall or a wardrobe door, it looked in those gloomy rooms as if someone were standing behind him. Hemming him in, even. When that happened he lashed out with his arms but didn’t move from the spot, hard though he found it not to.

He discovered the keys in the pocket of a pair of jeans. Stuck to them was a wad of chewing gum. Despite himself, Jonas almost threw up. He didn’t know why.

He drove, unconscious of the passage of time and heedless of the countryside gliding past. When he came to a road sign he looked up at it, made sure he was still heading in the right direction, and slumped behind the wheel again. His mind was a blank, save for the images that flooded into his head unbidden and vanished as quickly as they had
come. They left no impression behind. He was empty. Wholly intent on staying awake.

He managed to skirt London to the north. As soon as he felt satisfied he was clear of the city, he pulled up in the middle of the motorway, folded the seat back and closed his eyes.

4 a.m. He lowered the window. It was cold and damp outside. An unpleasant smell hung in the air, like burnt horn or molten rubber. All that broke the silence was the sound of his fingernails scratching the door panel. At this hour he would normally have heard birds twittering.

When he tried to drive off the car wouldn’t budge. Then it gave a sudden lurch and sent up a shower of red and yellow sparks, accompanied by a metallic screech.

He got out and shone the torch over the area immediately around the car. And then he directed it at the wheels.

All four tyres had been removed. The vehicle was standing on its bare hubs.

Some way from the car he came upon a smouldering mound he recognised as the remains of his tyres. A blackened tyre lever was jutting from.

There was no other car in sight. It was a long way to the next service area, and he didn’t know how far it was to the next exit road. He would have to leg it back to the last one, he supposed.

He stared irresolutely, first at the evil-smelling bonfire, then at the car. He was feeling devoid of energy. It had cost him an immense effort to get this far, and it would cost him an even greater effort to get to Smalltown and back. Such a soul-destroying thing to happen.

With his hands buried in his pockets, he set off in the direction he’d come from.

When he sighted a secondary road and, beyond it, a village, he scrambled down the motorway embankment. At around 6 a.m. he found a car with the key in the ignition. He debated whether to eat somewhere. First, however, he wanted to get further north. He didn’t like being so near London. It was deserted, he felt sure. He would only get lost in that vast metropolis and achieve nothing.

Jonas didn’t exceed 120 k.p.h. He would have liked to go faster, but he didn’t dare. Whatever it was, the tyre incident or a premonition, he felt he would expose himself to danger needlessly if he put his foot down too hard.

8 a.m. 9.11.2 p.m. The place names he saw on signs were familiar to him mainly from his childhood, when he was still interested in football and used to read newspaper reports about the English championship. Luton, Northampton, Coventry, Birmingham, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Stoke – the names of deserted towns and cities. They didn’t matter to him. All that mattered to him was the remaining distance to Scotland. Smalltown was less than five kilometres from the border.

Liverpool.

He’d taken an interest in Liverpool as a boy. Not much, because he didn’t like the football club. And not because Liverpool was the home of the Beatles. But the name had such a peculiar ring to it. There were words that seemed to change as you looked at them or said them aloud, words whose meaning seemed to disappear before your eyes. There were dead words and live ones. Liverpool was alive. Li-ver-pool. Lovely. A lovely word. Like, for example, space, when it meant the universe.
Space
. So apt. So lovely.

England, Scotland: ordinary words. Ger-ma-ny: an ordinary word. But Italy, that was a word with soul and music.
This had nothing to do with his liking for the country, it was the word itself. Italy was the country with the loveliest name, followed by Peru, Chile, Iran, Afghanistan, Mexico. If you read the words Ireland or Finland, nothing happened. Read the word Italy, and you sensed a kind of softness. It was a mellow, supple name. Eire and Suomi sounded much better than Ireland and Finland.

Jonas had often noticed that a word could drive you crazy if you read it several times in succession. You started to wonder if it was spelt wrong. Any word, nothing extraordinary, such as ‘flicker’. F. L. I. C. K. E. R. Fli-cker. Flick. Flick-er. Every word had something unfathomable about it. It was as if it were a fake that bore no relation to what it denoted.

Mouth.

Foot.

Neck.

Hand.

Jonas. Jo-nas.

He had always found it hard to read his name and believe that it indicated him. The name Jonas, written down on a sheet of paper. Those lines, those letters, signified that person. Person – another of those words. Per-son. Perrrson. Prrrrr.

Just beyond Bolton, it was late afternoon by now, he folded the seat back, but not before he’d got out to make sure there was no tyre lever in the boot and he had no knife with him. He locked himself in.

It was dark when he opened his eyes. He was sitting in the car, but his surroundings seemed to have changed.

3 a.m. The air smelt of rain. Jonas was cold, but not hungry or thirsty. He turned on the interior light. He
rubbed his face. It felt greasy. A piece of spaghetti was stuck to the ball of his thumb. From the taste in his mouth, he might just have polished off a rare steak. His breath reeked of … What was it? Wine. The smell revolted him. He felt in his pockets. No chewing gum. Nothing that might have taken away the taste in his mouth.

He turned the key in the ignition. The car wouldn’t start. The fuel gauge stood at zero.

He got out. The ground was wet. It was drizzling. Some distance away he caught sight of a lighted window. While walking towards it he was surprised to see the silhouette of an aircraft. Beyond it he made out another, and another. Was he dreaming? He went over and touched the landing gear. The tyres were real enough.

He had an urge to call out, ‘Hooo!’, but didn’t dare.

The closer he got to the lighted window, the more mystified he became. Where was he? An airfield or airport, that was obvious, but where? Bolton? Liverpool?

He slowed his pace, looking up at the window. It seemed to be an office window. He thought he could see some pot plants behind the blinds, which were half lowered.

He wasn’t sure if what was waiting for him up there was entirely good.

He turned round. No one there. Nothing to be seen in the gloom, not even vague shapes, and he had only a rough idea of where he’d left the car.

It wasn’t that he’d sensed someone nearby. On the contrary, he’d never felt so remote from everything in his life. Even so, he thought it better to change his location, so he ran for fifty metres, silently zigzagging like a hare. This brought him to a building with a big sign on the side.

Exeter Airport.

Exeter? Surely not? He knew the city by name because special products were manufactured there for the processing of wood for furniture-making. Although he’d never
been there, he knew roughly where it was: far to the south and almost on the coast.

A whole day’s driving wasted.

He belched involuntarily, reeking of wine.

Quite suddenly, his legs started to tremble. He felt weary, infinitely weary. His one remaining wish was to stretch out and go to sleep. He was so eager to escape from the profound inertia that filled him, it didn’t matter to him at this moment that he might once more put himself at the mercy of a process he couldn’t understand, still less control. He longed to rest, to lie down and sleep. But not here on the rain-soaked asphalt. Somewhere comfortable, or at least soft. Not cold, anyway.

Like a blind man, with one hand held out in front of him, he tottered back to the car.

He awoke just before 7 a.m. Although he didn’t feel fully rested, his tiredness was less tormenting.

He wrote
Jonas, 14 August
on a slip of paper. Before putting it behind the windscreen he looked at the letters he’d written. Jonas. That was him, Jo-nas. And 14 August, that was today. This 14 August would never recur. It was a one-time occurrence, so the memory of it would be unique. The fact that there had been other days bearing this date, a 14 August in 1900, another in 1930, others in 1950, 1955, 1960, 1980, was a human simplification, a lie. No day ever recurred. None. And no one day resembled another, whether or not people lived through it. The wind blew north, the wind blew south. The rain rained on this stone, not that. This leaf fell, that branch snapped, this cloud drifted across the sky.

Jonas had to find himself another car. After walking for an hour he came across an old Fiat whose rear seat was
covered with soft toys in plastic wrappings. Beer cans lay scattered around it, some full, some empty. The taste of raw meat still lingered on his tongue. He rinsed his mouth out.

A locket was dangling on a chain from the rear-view mirror. He opened it. It contained two photographs. One was of a smiling young woman, and concealed beneath it was one of the Virgin Mary.

Jonas took the exit road to Bristol, fighting off a renewed urge to sleep. Several times he pulled up, walked around for a bit and performed some exercises. He never stopped for long. The wind was so strong it almost blew him off his feet. He felt he oughtn’t to stray too far from the car.

Midday came and went, but he drove on. He didn’t want to go to sleep, he wanted to drive on. On and on.

Liverpool.

The mysterious videotape came to mind. The one on which he’d seen his mother and grandmother. He didn’t want to think about it, but the images forced themselves on him. He saw the old woman’s waxen face, saw how she seemed to be talking to him soundlessly.

Preston.

Lancaster.

Only 150 kilometres to the Scottish border. He couldn’t go on, though. He knew it would be a mistake to go to sleep, but every fibre of his being cried out for rest. He couldn’t steer straight any more.

He pulled up and lowered the driver’s window, shouted something and drove on.

He didn’t know how much further he’d gone when he noticed that his left eye was shut. His right eyelid, too, was
almost beyond control, and his chin was propped on the steering wheel. He wondered where he was going.

Where was he going? Why was he in this car?

He had to sleep.

Jonas opened his eyes, but everything was still dark. He tried to get his bearings, couldn’t even remember going to sleep. His last memory had been of the motorway, the monotonous grey ribbon ahead of him.

He straightened up with a jerk and hit his head, let out a yell and sank back, rubbing his forehead.

His voice had sounded hollow. Where was he? He seemed to be holding a knife in his hand. He checked with the other hand. Yes, it was a hunting knife or something similar.

He found he couldn’t turn round, he was hemmed in on all sides. He could barely move, there was no room. His legs were bent, his body was doubled over.

Where was he?

‘Hey!’ he shouted.

He thumped the wall with his fist. Just a dull thud, no echo.

‘Hey! What is this?’

He braced both forearms against the obstruction above him, but it didn’t move.

A coffin.

He was in a coffin.

He hammered on the walls of his prison and shouted. His voice sounded muffled, horribly muffled. Something seemed to explode inside his head. He saw colours he hadn’t known existed. Inexplicable images danced in front of his eyes, mingled with sounds. A penetrating smell of glue filled the box he lay in. He lashed out with his feet.
Another wall, Before long, his feet and fingertips felt as if they were on fire.

Was a fire being lit under him? Was he being roasted in a vessel of some kind?