Borkmann's point

49

The thought of death came like a considerate guest, but once she had let it in, it decided to stay.

All at once it was living with her. Uninvited and inexorable.

Like a hand squeezing her midriff. Like a slowly swelling tumor. A gray cloud spreading throughout her body, smother ing her thoughts under still more hopeless darkness.

Death. Suddenly it had become the only reality she pos sessed. This is the end, she told herself, and it was nothing especially traumatic or upsetting. She was going to die… either by his hand or of her own accord. Lying curled up here on the floor under all these blankets, with this aching body of hers and with this writhing soul, which was the most fragile part of her… that was what would give way first, she knew now; once she had opened the door to death, the spark of life inside her was slowly dimming. Perhaps it would be only a hundred or seventy or even twenty intakes of breath before it would be extinguished. She had started counting now; people always did when they were in prison, she knew that. She’d read about prisoners who had kept themselves sane thanks to this constant counting, the only snag being that she had nothing to count. No events. No noises. No time.

Only her own breathing and pulse.

She was waiting for him now. Longing for him as if he were her lover… her warder, her executioner, her murderer?

Whatever. Every change, every incident, every imaginable interruption… anything but this constant intercourse with death.

Her considerate and demanding guest.

The dish of food was half full, but she could no longer get anything down. She would occasionally moisten her tongue with water, but she was not in the least thirsty either. She struggled as far as the bucket, but could produce nothing… all her bodily functions had left her, one after another, it was as simple as that.

Why didn’t he come?

Even if time no longer existed, she had the feeling that something must have delayed him. She made up her mind to count up to four thousand heartbeats, and if he hadn’t arrived by then, she would…

… she would count another four thousand heartbeats.

Was it possible to distinguish between a thousand heart beats and another thousand heartbeats? Could it be done? And if so, what was the point?

And as she counted, that hand squeezed tighter and tighter.

The cloud grew.

Death filled her.

“I’m late,” he said, and she could barely hear his voice.

“Yes,” she whispered.

He sat there in silence, and she noticed that she was now counting his breaths. Rasping in the darkness as usual, but even so his, not hers… something that didn’t emanate from her self.

“Tell me your story,” she begged.

He lit a cigarette and suddenly she felt the faint glow grow ing and forcing its way inside her… all at once the whole of her body was filled with light and the next moment she lost consciousness. She woke up in a glittering white world, where a pulsating and vibrant gleam was so strong and powerful that it was rumbling inside her. Vertiginous spirals spun around inside her head, and she plunged into them, was sucked up and carried by this infernally rotating whiteness, this flood of rag ing light…

Then it began to recede. The torrent slowed down and found a slowly swaying rhythm; waves and breakers, and the smell of earth returned. Of earth and smoke. Once again she saw only darkness and a trembling red point, and she realized that something had happened. She didn’t know what, but she had been elsewhere and was now back. And the cloud was no longer spreading.

Something had happened.

“Tell me your story,” she said, and now her voice was steady, like before. “Tell me about Heinz Eggers.”

“Heinz Eggers,” he said, and hesitated as he usually did at the start. “Yes, I’ll tell you about Heinz Eggers as well. It’s just that I am so tired, so very tired… but I’ll keep going to the end, of course.”

She had no time to reflect on what his words might imply.

He cleared his throat and started.

“It was in Selstadt… she moved there. Or was moved there. Was taken in hand by the social services and placed in Trieckberg; do you know Trieckberg?”

“No.”

“One of those community homes that manages to help the odd patient… doesn’t just allow them to drift out then back in, out and back in, until they finally die of an overdose or a dirty needle. It manages to help the odd patient. Then… we had contact, good contact; we went to visit her, and she wasn’t too bad. There was a spark of light again, but after a few months we heard that she had run away… it was a long, long time before we were tipped off that she might be in Selstadt. Trieck berg isn’t far from there. I drove to Selstadt and searched… after a few days I dug up an address and went there. It was a drug den, of course. I’ve seen a fair amount, but I’ve never seen anybody in a worse state than Brigitte and the other woman in

Heinz Eggers’s stable… that’s what he called it. His stable. He obviously thought I’d come for a quick session with one or both of his whores. He might have had more, come to that…”

He paused.

“What did you do?” she asked after a while.

“I hit him. Punched him on the nose. Hadn’t the strength to do any more than that. He disappeared. I phoned for an ambu lance and got both of them into hospital… she died three weeks later. Bitte died at the hospital in Selstadt. Forgive me,

I’m too tired to go into the details.”

“How?”

He waited again and inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

Dropped it on the floor and stamped out the glow with his foot.

“Slit her own throat as she threw herself out of a sixth-floor window… wanted to make sure. That was September 30, 1988. She was twenty-seven years old.”

He remained sitting there for longer than usual this time. Sat the usual three or four yards away from her in the darkness, breathing heavily. Neither of them spoke; she gathered there was nothing else to add. He had finished now.

He had achieved his vengeance.

The story was told.

It was all over.

They sat there in the darkness, and it seemed to her that they were simply two actors who happened to be still onstage, even though the curtain had long since come down.

What now? she wondered. What comes next?

What will Horatio do after the death of Hamlet?

Live and tell the story one more time, as he had been requested to do?

Die by his own hand, which is his wish?

In the end she dared to put the question:

“What do you intend to do?”

She could hear him give a start. Perhaps he had actually fallen asleep. He seemed to be enveloped by infinite weariness, in any case, and she immediately felt that she would have liked to give him advice.

Some kind of comfort. But there was none, of course.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve played my part. I must receive a sign. Must go there and wait for a sign…”

He stood up.

“What day is it?” she asked suddenly, without knowing why.

“It’s not day,” he said. “It’s night.”

Then he left her again.

Well, I’m still alive, she thought in surprise. And night is the mother of day…