F

DUTIES

I’ve already been hearing the sobbing for some time. At first it was a sound in my dream, but now the dream is over and the sobbing is coming from the woman next to me. Eyes closed, I know that the voice is Laura’s, or, rather, that suddenly it’s been hers all along. She’s crying so hard that the mattress is shaking. I lie there motionless. How long can I pretend I’m asleep? I would love to give up and sink back into unconsciousness, but I can’t. The day has begun. I open my eyes.

The morning sun pushes through the slats of the blinds and draws fine lines in both carpet and wall. The pattern on the carpet is symmetrical, but if you look at it for a long time, it captures your attention, gripping it until you can’t shake free. Laura is lying next to me in perfect peace, breathing silently, sound asleep. I push back the blanket and get up.

As I’m groping my way down the hall, the memory of the dream returns. No doubt about it, it was my grandmother. She looked tired, worn out, and somehow not complete, as if only a portion of her soul had managed to force its way through to me. She stood in front of me, bent over, leaning on a walking stick, with two ballpoint pens sticking out of her bun. She opened and closed her mouth and made signs with her hands; she was determined to tell me something. She looked unutterably weary, lips pursed, eyes pleading, until in the next moment some change in the dream washed her away and I was somewhere else, surrounded by other things. I will never know what she wanted to tell me.

I shave, get into the shower, and turn on the hot tap. The water is warm, then hot, then very hot, which is how I like it. I tip my head back and let the water beat down on me, listen to the noise, feel the pain, and forget absolutely everything for a moment.

It doesn’t last long. Already the memory comes crashing back like a wave. Perhaps I can hold out for another couple of months, maybe even three, but not longer.

I turn off the water, get out of the shower, and push my face into the terrycloth of the bath towel. As always, my memory reacts to the smell, calling up images: Mama taking me to bed wrapped in a towel, Papa’s tall figure outlined by the ceiling light, his tousled hair in silhouette, Ivan already asleep in the other bed, our sandbox where I always knocked over the towers he built, a meadow, a worm he found that I split in half, and he cried and cried. Or was it the other way around? I put on my bathrobe. Now I need my medication.

In my study everything is normal. This calms me. The desk with its big screen, the Paul Klee on one wall and the Eulenboeck on the other, the empty files. I have never worked here. Even the drawers are empty and not one of the reference books has ever been opened. But when I sit here and pretend to be lost in thought, no one comes in, and that counts for something in and of itself.

Two Throprens, a Torbit, a Prevoxal, and a Valium — I can’t begin the day with too much, because I have to be able to up the dose if something unforeseen occurs. I swallow them all in one gulp; it’s unpleasant and I have to use all my willpower to conquer the gag reflex. Why I always take them without water, I have no idea.

Already I can feel them working. It’s probably my imagination, nothing could work that fast, but is that important? Indifference settles over me like cotton wool. Life goes on. One day you’ll lose it all, the name Eric Friedland will be abhorred, those who still trust you will curse you, your family will fall apart, and they’ll lock you up. But not today.

I’ll never be able to tell anyone how much I hate this Paul Klee. Lopsided diamonds, red on a black background, and next to them a wind-blown, truly pitiful little matchstick man. Even I could have painted it. I know I’m not supposed to even think such a sentence, it is utterly forbidden, but I can’t help it, even I could have painted it, it would have taken me less than five minutes! Instead of which I paid seven hundred and fifty thousand euros for it, but a man in my position must possess a very expensive painting: Janke has a Kandinsky, Nettelback of BMW has a Monet — maybe it’s a Manet, what do I know? — and old Rebke, my golf partner, has a Richard Serra on the lawn, huge, rusty, and always in the way at garden parties. So I asked Ivan two years ago to get me a picture too, it just had to be something that was a sure thing.

He immediately pretended he didn’t understand me. He likes doing that — it amuses him. What did I mean, “sure thing”?

“Sure thing,” I said, “means that it impresses everyone. That no expert has something against the artist. Like with Picasso. Or Leonardo. One of those guys.”

He laughed at me. He likes doing that too. Picasso? There were hundreds of experts who didn’t take Picasso seriously, and if you chose one of his wrong periods, you’d be criticized willy-nilly. Almost no one had a good word to say about his late work, for example! But Paul Klee, you could get one of his, no one had anything against Paul Klee.

“And Leonardo?”

“No Leonardos on the market. Take Klee.”

Then he attended the auction for me. At half a million he called me to ask if he should keep bidding. I would like to have yelled at him. But what if he thought I couldn’t even afford a matchstick man? For a while it hung in the salon, then Laura suddenly didn’t like it anymore. So since then it’s been hanging over my desk, staring at me in a pushy way and doing damage in my dreams. I can’t sell it, too many people have seen it in the salon where I have of course pointed it out to them, look at my Klee, what do you think of my Klee, yes of course it’s genuine! As soon as the investigators start work, one of their first questions will be where the Klee is. Art is a trap, nothing more, cleverly dreamed up by people like my brother!

Still in my bathrobe I go along the hall and down the stairs to the media room. There’s a screen and a video beamer. The black cubes of the speakers are powerful enough to service a football stadium. A soft leather couch sits in front of it.

The remote is lying on the table. Without thinking about it I sit down, reach for it, and press a couple of buttons. The screen hums into life: the early-morning TV programming — a nature film. A dragonfly lands on a stalk. Its legs are no bigger than a hair, its wings tremble, and its antennae touch the rough green. Interesting, but it reminds me about the camera.

There’s one hidden in one of the appliances. It would be strange if there weren’t one, because they’re so easy to conceal, I would never find it among all the lenses. I push another button, the meadow disappears, to be replaced by some undersecretary standing behind a lectern and talking so fast that you’d think everything must hang on his finishing as fast as possible.

“No,” I say. “No, no, no, no. No!”

Luckily that helps. He slows down.

But unfortunately he’s noticed me. Without stopping talking, he casts a swift glance in my direction. He did it very unobtrusively, but it didn’t escape me.

I hold my breath. I must not make a wrong move now. Without question it’s crazy, I know it, the broadcast with the undersecretary is a recording, nobody gives press conferences this early in the morning.

But I also know that he looked at me.

“Totally calm. Always keep calm.”

With cold terror I realize that I said it out loud. I can’t make this kind of mistake. And the undersecretary, whose name I suddenly recall — he’s called Obermann, Bernd Richard Obermann, and he’s responsible for power or education or something — heard it, for a mocking smile appears for a moment on his face. I don’t let anything show; I don’t lose my cool so easily. Keep calm, I say to myself again, but this time silently and without moving my lips, behave as if everything’s fine! Somehow I have to manage to look away from the screen. I concentrate on the edge of my field of vision, and then somewhat blurrily I see something on the carpet, a disturbance in the symmetry: a red wine stain. Damn it, this carpet cost thirty-five thousand euros!

My fury helps me to look away from the screen. Out of the corner of my eye I register that Undersecretary Obermann has disappeared. Some harmless man is now talking into the microphone and has no interest in me. Quickly I lift the remote, the picture flames up for a moment and is gone.

That was a close-run thing. I stand up, notice someone in the doorway, and jump back.

“Did I frighten you?”

“No, of course not. No, no. No!” I look at my daughter, my daughter looks at me, and to say something I ask, “Do you have a test to take today?”

“Yes, in math.”

I congratulate myself, now I’m behaving like a father who has a grip on things and takes part, while all I know is that children are always having to take tests for school. Something mean is always in the offing, and every day is certain to bring its own unpleasantness.

“Do you know anything about this red wine stain?”

She shakes her head.

“If it was you, it’s okay to tell me. You won’t be punished.”

“I don’t drink wine!”

She said it charmingly. I would love to kiss her now on both cheeks, but I think about the camera and leave things be. “And?” I ask instead. “Learned it all? Well prepared?”

She shrugs her shoulders as if she doesn’t believe I’d be interested. This upsets me. Because even though it really doesn’t interest me, I do my best to act like it matters.

I notice a tiny spider — a little dot working its way up the wall by the door. What does it live off, what does it eat, what does it drink, or don’t spiders drink? I would like to ask Marie, she’s bound to learn things like that in school, but instead I ask, “What’s up for today? Have you got as far as differential calculus?”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m ten, Papa.”

She has an answer for everything. Meanwhile the spider has worked its way over to the other side of the door; how did it get there so fast?

“What?” she asks.

“ ‘Excuse me.’ You must say ‘Excuse me,’ not ‘What.’ ”

“Excuse me?”

“What?”

“What sort of spider, Papa?”

Did I talk out loud? For heaven’s sake!

“You said—”

“No!”

“But you did—”

“I didn’t say a word!”

That came out too loud. I don’t want to frighten my daughter, and I mustn’t forget the camera. Stricken, I run my hand over Marie’s head. She smiles at me, then turns around and leaves, the way children always do, with a hop, a step, and a leap.

“Hurry up!” I call after her. “You’re late, school’s about to start!” I have no idea when school starts. But it’s bound to be true.

What will she think of me when I’m in prison? On the way to the dressing room upstairs I ask myself yet again why I don’t pluck up the courage to cut things short. So many have managed it: guns, pills, a leap from a high window. Why not me?

I’m actually too strong. Being strong isn’t just an advantage. You can tolerate more, you can get into even deeper trouble, and it’s harder to give up. The washed-out, the empty, and the spineless, who have nothing to lose if they lose themselves, can all just hang themselves someplace. But there’s something inside me that won’t allow that.

I like being in my dressing room, there are very rarely problems in here. Seventeen black bespoke suits hang in a row, thirty-nine white shirts are stacked on the shelves, and the tie rack holds twenty-five flawless ties in the selfsame shade of red. Sometimes people give me other ties, mostly with sophisticated patterns, and I throw them away. I have one black one, for funerals. On the floor there are twenty-one pairs of well-polished shoes.

It’s weekends that are hard. On your free days you can’t wear a suit, nor can you keep wearing the same checked shirt. It would be sensible and rational, so of course if you did it people would think you were weird. So I have a closet for weekends, days off, and holidays. In it are all kinds of colorful shirts: solid colors, checked, striped, even one with dots. Laura doesn’t like it, but I claim it’s my favorite. People ought to have a favorite shirt, it’s expected, it’s appealing. The closet also houses jeans, corduroys, leather belts, every kind of jacket, sports shoes, hiking shoes, fishing boots, though I’ve never been fishing and have no intention of ever changing that.

Luckily today is a weekday, so I’m done in five minutes. Black suit, white shirt, red tie. Everything feels better when you’re dressed in a suit. I nod into the mirror on the wall, my reflection nods back without hesitation. The world is functioning.

As I step into the hall, Laura is standing there.

“Did you sleep well?” I ask. I ask her this every morning, although I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean. Either you’re asleep or you’re awake, but I know from television that people ask one another these questions.

She takes a step back, in order to leave room for the answer.

How beautiful she still is! I nod and say, “Aha!” and “Oh,” while she talks about a journey and a magician and a rose bed. Thousands upon thousands of roses, a whole wide sea. Can you really dream any such thing? Perhaps it’s all invention, the way I invent almost everything I tell people.

“Are you listening to me?” she asks.

“Of course. Bed of roses.”

As she talks on, I stealthily log on to my phone: August 8, 2008, two thousand seven hundred and thirty unopened emails. And even as I’m looking at the screen, in come another two.

“Is that more interesting than what I’m talking about?”

“Darling!” I hastily stow the gadget. “Princess! It couldn’t be less interesting! Do please go on.”

This is in fact true, I haven’t read a single email for weeks, but because it’s the truth she takes it as a lie and sticks her lower lip out in a sulk.

“Laura! Please go on! Please!”

Obviously I’m not managing to hit the right tone today, for her brow furrows reproachfully. “Marie needs tutoring in math. You have to find a teacher. Mr. Lakebrink says it’s urgent.”

This is all going too fast for me. First roses just now, and here we are already with Lakebrink. “Is that her teacher?”

Her frown deepens.

“Lakebrink,” I say. “I know. That Lakebrink. That man.”

She takes another step back.

“Okay, so who is he?”

“Eric, what’s the matter with you?”

“Shall we just fly off somewhere?” I ask hastily. “Next weekend, just you and me …” Now I have to think of a really hot place, and quick. Where have we been recently? “To Sicily?” It was Sicily, or I’m pretty sure it was. Or just possibly it was Greece. Damp and hot as hell, absurdly high prices, impudently whispering servers, mangy cats staring down from sharp rocks like gargoyles, but Laura was in heaven.

She opens her arms, lays her head on my chest, and hugs me. Her hair smells sweet — a little like sage, a little like lemon, in fact she always smells good. She murmurs that I’m wonderful, generous, one of a kind; I can’t hear her that well, because her face is buried in my jacket, and I stroke her back.

“The headmaster,” she says.

“What?”

“Mr. Lakebrink is the headmaster of Marie’s school. You talked to him last week. At the parents’ meeting.”

I nod, as if I’d always known that. Of course I’ll have to come up with a convincing reason why we can’t go to Sicily. She’s going to be so disappointed that I have to come up with an even bigger promise, to sweeten her up, and then I’ll have to break that one too. All of it because of this parents’ meeting, that I can actually remember all too well: low ceiling, some kind of artificial flooring, harsh lights, and a poster with a slogan about getting yourself inoculated against something as soon as possible.

“Just one more thing, Eric!” She strokes my cheek. Her emotion makes me recall just how much I desired her even recently. “The day before yesterday, you told Marie the most important thing is never to stand out. Never to arouse other people’s jealousy.”

“So?”

“She took it very much to heart.”

“Okay, and?”

“But yesterday you told her that one should never make compromises. Keep fighting, keep trying to be the best you can. Never duck a fight.”

“And?”

“Now she’s confused.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a contradiction!”

“Sicily!” I cry.

Her face lights up at once.

We embrace again, and I am overcome by a sense of déjà vu so powerful that it makes me dizzy. I remember that I stood here once before and held her in my arms and had exactly this conversation with her, in a dream or in another life or even in this life, two or three days ago. And soon we’ll be standing here once again, and then probably Mr. Lakebrink will appear again, and the ax will fall, and the police will storm in, and the loop will finally stop replaying itself. I give her a horribly damp kiss on the forehead, head quickly for the stairs, and say “I love you” without turning around. Why, when it’s true, does it feel like a lie?

“Love you back,” she calls, and although it sounds fake, I know it’s true.

Being distracted, I take the first step of the stair with my left foot. Such a thing should never happen; in this house of all places I cannot afford to be careless. From the beginning, even the very first time we looked at it, I didn’t feel good here.

Do not think about the attic, not right now. I have to pretend I’ve forgotten it’s even there. Everything about it is repellant: the slope of the roof meets the floor at a particularly hideous angle, mud-brown rectangles are printed on the wallpaper, because of the blobs of dirt in the glass shade the old lamp casts a most horrible pentangle on the floorboards, and behind the narrow table, put there by someone, who knows who, many years ago, is an awkward gap. You only have to spend a few minutes up in it to know someone died there.

There’s nothing too unusual about that. In an old house someone will have croaked in almost every room. But what happened in this attic was a particularly hard way to die. It was long and drawn out, and it was extremely painful. Ghosts appeared and demons made themselves visible, attracted by the death throes. But how could I have explained all that to Laura? Seven and a half million. She fell in love with the house at first sight. Moorish tiles on the terrace, five bathrooms, a media room. What was I supposed to do?

So one night I went up there. It’s possible: people can confront fear, until it submits and retreats. I lasted almost three hours. The table, the shadows, the lamp, me. And someone else.

Then I ran. Down the stairs, across the hall, into the garden. A half-moon in the night sky was surrounded by shimmering clouds. I must have lain in the grass for a good hour, and when I slipped back into bed, Laura woke up and told me about her dream, some brightly colored bird, a friendly mailman, and a locomotive. And I stared up at the ceiling and thought about how there will be that room up there for as long as we live. Even when we no longer live here, when other people have replaced us for the longest time, it will still be there.

I open the front door. My God, it’s hot. The car is waiting, with the engine running, Knut sitting sullenly at the wheel. He hates waiting. I have no idea how someone like him became a chauffeur. Besides which I’m baffled about why he’s called Knut. He’s Greek and looks it: stubble, black hair, brown skin. On a long journey once he told me the story of his name, but I didn’t listen, and if I asked again now, he’d be offended. I get in. Knut drives off without so much as a hello.

I close my eyes. Already I hear him honking the horn.

He yells, “Idiot!” and honks again. “Did you see that, boss?”

I open my eyes. The street is completely empty.

“Smack at us from the left!” he yells.

“Unbelievable.”

“Idiot!”

While he bangs on the steering wheel, curses, and points this way and that, I ask myself for the thousandth time how I can get rid of him. Unfortunately he knows too much about me; I’m sure that the day after he was fired, he would be writing anonymous letters to Laura, to the police, to anyone that occurred to him, what do I know? The only possibility would be a discreet assassination. But if I really did want to kill someone, he’d be the only person I’d know to ask for help. He’s one tricky customer. I pull out the telephone and look at the market. Prices of raw commodities have fallen, the euro hasn’t recovered against the dollar, and the IT papers, which were overvalued, are exactly where they were yesterday. I don’t get it.

“Hot!” cries Knut. “So hot, so hot!”

I was convinced that IT stocks would fall. On the other hand I’ve seen the opposite coming — not out of some insight into the market, but because in the meantime I’ve accustomed myself to the knowledge that everything that happens is the opposite of what I expect. But what should I follow: my insight, or the knowledge that I’m always wrong?

“March, April!” cries Knut. “Always rain. May — rain. Always! — and now this!”

But losses don’t frighten me anymore. If the market had developed the way I said it would, nothing would have changed. Rising share prices won’t save me anymore. It would take a miracle.

The phone vibrates, the screen says, Are you coming today?

Of course, I type.

As I’m hitting the Send button, I’m thinking about what excuse I could use in case she writes back that I should come at once. I have no time. Adolf Kluessen has checked in; he’s my most important client. But she’s usually working during the day, and if she writes that I shouldn’t come until the evening, she’ll feel guilty and that’s helpful, it’s something I can build on.

I stare at the phone. The screen with the gray face stares back. No answer.

And still no answer.

I close my eyes and count slowly to ten — Knut talks and I pay no attention. When I reach seven I lose patience, open my eyes, and look at the screen.

No answer.

Okay, forget it. I don’t need her, I get on better without her! And perhaps this is her revenge for last Sunday.

We met outside the entrance, it was an art movie house, they were showing Orson Welles’s last film, she absolutely wanted to see it, I wasn’t interested, but so what, no other film would have interested me either. The lobby stank of frying fat, and as we stood in the line for tickets we ran out of things to say. We were just taking our seats when a man jumped up in the row right in front of me and yelled my name.

It was such a shock that I didn’t recognize him right away. The first things to organize themselves were his features: mouth, nose, eyes. Then the ears resumed their usual places, and the entity became Dr. Uebelkron, the husband of Laura’s best friend, who was a fixture at all of our garden parties.

I hugged him like a long-lost brother. Then I hit him on the shoulder a couple of times and began to ask him questions like how his wife was doing, and his daughter, and his mother, and what were we all supposed to be making of this heat wave. The film had already started. People around us were shushing and clearly even Dr. Uebelkron wanted to leave things be, but I kept on talking, asking questions, didn’t give him time to answer, and kept manipulating his shoulder mercilessly. When I finally let go of him, he sank into his seat exhausted, without managing to ask who the woman with me was. I checked the time, waited exactly four minutes, pulled out my phone, cried, “Oh no,” “Oh God,” and “Coming right away,” leapt up, and ran out. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the taxi that I realized Sibylle was still in the cinema.

The phone vibrates. Good. Come!

When?

Three seconds later: Now!

Can’t, I type. Important client. It’s habit, so it feels like an excuse, but it’s the truth. I hit the Send button and wait.

Nothing.

So what’s going on, why isn’t she answering? Mobilizing my entire willpower I put the phone away. We’re here.

As always I get out on the street and leave Knut to drive into the underground garage. I can’t go down there, it’s simply not possible. Quickly through the blazing heat, the glass doors are opening already, and I’m in the lobby. The elevator takes me to the twelfth floor. I hurry through the open-plan office, full of identical faces in front of identical screens. Some of them I know, some I don’t, I’m glad that none of them speaks to me. Recently I’ve been forgetting too many names.

My secretaries greet me silently. One of them is beautiful, the other capable, they hate each other, and they’re not that fond of me either. I’ve slept with the beautiful one, her name is Elsa, six or seven times. I would have gotten rid of her a long time ago, except she could blackmail me. The other one, Kathi, I only slept with once, under the influence of new medication that made me do all sorts of things I don’t want to think about anymore.

“Mr. Kluessen is waiting,” says Kathi.

“Fine.” I go into my office, sit down behind the desk, fold my hands, and slowly count to ten. Then I finally pull the phone out of my pocket. No answer. Why is she doing this to me?

I administer Adolf Albert Kluessen’s entire estate, and I’ve lost everything. All the statements and accounts he’s received in the last two years were faked. The man is old and not very clever, and even if I’m no longer in any condition to win back his money, I can still manage to invent impressive balances and report gains I would have made, had I foreseen the movements of the market. I also add all sorts of curves to the figures, drawn in red, blue, and yellow, which increase trust. But every conversation with him has its dangers.

I stand up and go to the window. The view is spectacular; it’s hard to accustom yourself to the sheer extent of it, and the brightness. As ever, when the world, uninvited, threatens me with its sparkle and brilliance, I have to think of Ivan, and a long-gone afternoon in Arthur’s library. We were twenty-two, it was shortly before Christmas, Ivan had come from Oxford, I had come from the sanatorium.

“Tell!” he said.

I had almost no memory of the last months. Everything had been eggshell colored, the walls, the floor, the ceilings, the staff’s coats. At night you didn’t know whether the voices you were hearing came from the other patients or out of your own head.

“You have to play along,” said Ivan. “That’s the whole trick. You have to lie. You think people see through you, but nobody sees through anyone. People are impossible to read. You think other people get what’s going on inside you, but that’s wrong.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s the right answer. Watch, bend the rules. People are almost never spontaneous; mostly they’re machines. What they do, they do out of habit. You have to undo the rules, and then you have to follow them as if your life depended on it. Because it does. Your life depends on it.”

I stared at the table. Very old wood, a family heirloom, it once belonged to our great-grandfather, who had supposedly been an actor. The black grain made an unbelievably beautiful pattern. It surprised me that I should even notice such a thing, but then I realized I wasn’t the one who had noticed. It was Ivan.

“Truth!” he said. “That’s all well and good. But sometimes none of it gets you anywhere. Always ask what people are expecting of you. Say what people say. Do what people do. Ask yourself who exactly you’d like to be. Then ask yourself what that person you’d like to be would do. Then do it.”

“If the cell hadn’t split back then,” I said, “there would only have been one of us.”

“Concentrate!”

“But who would it have been? Me, or some third person we don’t know? Who?”

“The trick is to sort things out with yourself. That’s the hardest thing. Don’t expect help from anyone. And don’t imagine you can go into therapy. All it’ll teach you is to accept yourself. You get good at excuses.”

I should have told him he was right, I think now, I should never have gone into therapy. I would like to talk to him, even today, I need to see him, I need his advice. Maybe I could borrow money from him and disappear. A fake passport, a plane to Argentina, just me. It would still be possible.

I pick up the phone and unfortunately hear Elsa’s voice, not Kathi’s: “I need to speak to my brother. Call him, ask him to come here.”

“Which brother?”

I rub my eyes. “What do you mean, which?”

She says nothing.

“So call him! Tell him it’s really important. And will you finally get Kluessen in here!”

I hang up, cross my arms, and try to look as if I were sunk in thought. Suddenly it occurs to me that I didn’t see Kluessen outside in the waiting room. The couch was empty. But didn’t she tell me he’d arrived? If he was already here and not in the waiting room, would that mean …? Worried, I look around.

“Hello, Adolf!”

He’s sitting there, staring at me. He must have been there the whole time. I smile and try to look as if it had all been a joke.

Adolf Albert Kluessen, a substantial old man in his mid-seventies, well dressed, accustomed to being obeyed, skin wrinkled by the sun, bushy eyebrows, looks at me as if he’d swallowed a frog, as if he’d lost his key today, along with his passport and his briefcase, and was being held up to ridicule for all of it, as if he’d been robbed and then his sports car had had its paint scratched. There are dark patches of sweat under the arms of his polo shirt, but that’s a result of the heat and doesn’t mean a thing. Adolf Albert Kluessen, son of the department store owner Adolf Ariman Kluessen, grandson of the founder of the department store Adolf Adomeit Kluessen, scion of a family whose eldest son has borne the name Adolf for so long that no one could rally themselves to give up the tradition, go figure, looks at me as if the whole world were despicable. And with all of that, he doesn’t even know he’s bankrupt.

“Adolf, how nice to see you!”

His hand feels as knotty as wood. I hope mine isn’t damp with nerves. Nonetheless, I have control of my voice, it isn’t trembling, and my eyes are clear. He says something about me not answering his emails, and I cry that it’s a scandal and I’ll fire my secretary. I quickly lay three printed sheets in front of him: figures that mean nothing, and include the most famous risk-free stocks: Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Google, and Mercedes-Benz, lots of pie charts, everything as lit up as can be.

But today it’s not working. He blinks, then sets the sheets of paper aside, leans forward, and says he has something really basic he needs to get off his chest.

“Something basic!” I get to my feet, walk around my desk, and sit on the edge. Always make sure you’re a little higher than your counterpart — an old negotiating trick.

He’s no longer the youngest of men, he says. He doesn’t want to risk things anymore.

“Risk?” I fold my hands. “On my father’s life!” Folding your hands is helpful, it looks sincere. By contrast, what looks totally false is laying your hand on your heart. “We’ve never taken risks!”

Warren Buffett, says Kluessen, has advised never to invest in anything you don’t understand.

“But I understand it. It’s my profession, Adolf.” I stand up and go to the window, so that he can’t see my face.

A few years ago everything was still in good order. The investments were lucrative, the results satisfactory. Then there was a bottleneck in liquidity and it occurred to me that nothing was stopping me from simply asserting that I’d made gains. If you report losses, investors pull their money out. Declare profits and everything stays the same — you can continue, you balance out the loss, no one is hurt, it’s only numbers on a piece of paper. So that’s what I did, and after a few months the money was there again.

But a year later I was in the same situation. At the worst moment my second-most-important client wanted to withdraw twenty-nine million euros. I had positions I couldn’t liquidate without losses, so I reported fake gains, which brought me new investors, and I used their money to cover the payments. I was sure that the stock exchange would quickly recover its equilibrium and everything would go back to normal.

But the market kept dropping. More investors wanted to take their money out, and if I hadn’t made more raids on capital, the whole thing would have blown up. When the market really did recover, too much was already missing.

But I still had hope. I was considered to be successful, investors flocked to me, and I used their money to pay previous investors their gains: ten, twelve, sometimes even fifteen percent, so much that almost nobody had the idea of withdrawing their capital. For a long time I thought a way out would suddenly present itself. Then, one night two years ago when I was forced to run the numbers in my head, and run them, and run them, I knew it wasn’t ever going to happen.

Argentina or Venezuela. Ecuador. Liberia. Ivory Coast. New passport, new name, a new life. I should have done it. Marie might have been enchanted. Laura could have given parties someplace else. The weather is inarguably better anywhere but here.

But then the moment was lost. I had been too slow, too undecided. It takes a lot of money to vanish in comfort. Now I am totally wiped out. All the capital is gone, all my credit is used up.

“Do you know the Bhagavad Gita?” I ask.

Kluessen stares at me. He hadn’t reckoned on this.

“The god Krishna says to the commander Arjuna: You will never be able to explain why things are as they are. You will never be able to sort out the complications. But here you stand, mighty warrior. Don’t ask why, stand up and give battle.”

I once heard this on the car radio. The quote pleased me so much that I asked Elsa to look it up.

“Yes, but where?” she asked.

“In the Bhagavad Gita.”

“How do I find it?”

“When you read it.”

“The whole thing?”

“Only until you hit the right sentence.”

“And if it’s right at the end?”

She didn’t find it, so I’m quoting from memory. Kluessen isn’t going to be looking things up.

He’s silent. Then he says: Whatever. He wants to reassign his portfolio.

“Adolf!” I clap him so hard on the shoulder that the old man’s body shakes. For a moment I lose the thread: it’s to do with his eyebrows. With brows that bushy, it’s no wonder that someone might get confused. “Together we’ve earned a great deal of money. And it’s going to grow! Base prices are all on the uptick. Anyone who bails out now is going to regret it.”

Whatever, is his response once again, and he massages his shoulders. His wife, his son, and he have reached an agreement to redistribute the assets. His son thinks the entire system is heading for collapse. Everyone is piled with debt. Capital is far too cheap. It’s not going to come out well.

“Redistribute assets? You don’t even know what that means!” No, this time I’ve gone too far. “I mean, of course you do, but this doesn’t sound like you, these are not your words, this isn’t the Adolf I know.”

He says his son has just gotten his MBA and—

“Adolf! University is one thing, but reality …!” What is all this, what is his son doing, mixing himself up in it? I say nothing for a moment, then draw back and cut loose. It doesn’t matter what I say, Kluessen understands almost nothing and notices even less. What counts is that there is the sound of a human voice, with no interruption and no hesitation, what counts is that he hears my voice and grasps that there is something more powerful at work here than he can summon up, with an intellect that dwarfs his own.

Soon I’ll have to talk this way in front of the court. My lawyer will advise me to make no statement, that’s what lawyers always do. They worry about contradictions, they don’t trust anyone to cope with the prosecutor, they think no one can talk with conviction about anything. It’s possible that I will even have to part company with my attorney, which in the middle of a trial will have a devastating impact. Perhaps it’s better if I conduct my own defense. But people who defend themselves are regarded as idiots, any respectable defendant must have an expensive defense attorney, a pompous, grandstanding gentleman. There’s no way around it. But I’ll keep control of my own testimony.

“What do you mean?” asks Kluessen.

“Excuse me?”

“What testimony? Where?”

He looks at me, I look at him. It can’t be that I spoke out loud, it must be a misunderstanding. So I make a dismissive gesture and keep talking: about derivatives and secondary derivatives, undervalued real estate funds, dispersed risk, and statistical arbitrage. I quote the professional magazine Econometrica, of which I possess a single copy, mention game theory and the Nash equilibrium, and don’t omit a hint that I have connections to people in key positions who give me inside information — borderline illegal, but extremely profitable.

Finally I stop. One must always give one’s opponent the chance to collect his thoughts. He has to come to his senses and be able to grasp that he’s lost. I fold my hands, bend forward, and look him in the eye. He pulls out a handkerchief and does a thorough job of cleaning his nose.

“Handshake, Adolf!” I hold out my hand. “A man and his word. We’ll carry on together. Yes?”

He says he’s confused.

“Handshake!”

He says he’s confused.

With my left arm I reach for his right arm and try to take his hand in mine. He resists. I pull, he keeps on resisting, and he’s surprisingly strong.

He needs to think, he says. He will talk to his son, and write me a letter.

“Just think about it!” I say hoarsely. “As long as you want! Thinking is always important.”

Now we do actually shake hands, but not to seal our professional partnership, just to say goodbye. I squeeze so hard that all the suntan fades from his wrinkled face. I know I’ve lost. He will demand his money back. And he knows that I know. What he doesn’t know is that I no longer have his money.

For a moment I fantasize about killing him quickly. I could strangle him or break his skull with something hard. But then what? How do I get rid of the body? Besides which it’s likely that there’s a camera in here. Wearily I collapse into my chair and prop my head in my hands.

When I look up, Kluessen has left. In his place there is a tall man standing in the room. He’s leaning against the wall and watching me. I close my eyes, then open them again. He’s still there. He has a hideous gap in his front teeth.

Not good, I think.

“No,” says the man. “Not good at all.”

I close my eyes.

“Won’t help,” says the man.

And yes, I can still see him.

“Don’t get mixed up in it,” says the man. “Just walk right past. When you see them, don’t get mixed up in it. Leave it be. Don’t speak to the three of them, keep on going.”

I feel dizzy. Mixed up in it? Keep on going? I can’t ask him what he’s talking about, right now I have to deal with Kluessen. I can drag things out for a week or two, tangle him up in some complicated exchange of letters, be unreachable, and generally bring things to a standstill with a series of excuses and questions. But at some point he’ll press charges, then the prosecutors will weigh in with their interrogations, but the time will tick by and until then I can stay living in my house and drive to work every morning. Autumn will come, the leaves will fall, and with any luck I won’t be arrested before the first snowstorm.

The man is no longer there. I hold up my hand in front of my eyes. The sunlight in the window is so harsh that it seems to destroy the tint of the glass. I pick up the receiver and ask Elsa for a glass of water. It’s already here and I drink it. As I set it down, I see a priest I know. He’s even fatter than he was the last time. When did my brother come in? And the glass in my hand, who brought it so quickly?

“Can I do something for you?” I ask cautiously. Perfectly possible I’m just imagining him. I mustn’t give myself away.

He hems and haws, murmurs something, obviously doesn’t want to say anything specific.

I take a sheet of paper and pretend to read. My hands are shaking. The thing with Kluessen really got to me.

He asks something.

So — it’s not a fantasy. Ghosts never ask questions. But his black outfit unsettles me, it makes me think of exorcisms. Then he says something about a cube and at first I think he’s talking about some dice game, but then it becomes clear that he means his hobby, and in order to avoid having to listen to the whole nonsense, I ask if he’s already eaten, get up, and leave the office. Outside I stop by Elsa’s desk, bend over, smell her perfume, force myself not to lay hands on her, and ask what in the world my brother’s doing here.

That was her task, she says. To call my brother! And ask him to come at once. That’s what I told her.

“Oh,” I say. “Right. Got it. I know.” I have no idea what she’s talking about. Why should I have set this up?

I walk quickly to the elevator. The phone vibrates in my pocket. I extract it. So now what, do you want to come or not?

Now? I write back. I wait. My brother is nowhere to be seen. Why is everyone always so ponderous? Wretched, life-sapping inertia! And why isn’t she answering?

Here he comes. The elevator doors open, we step in, and once again I’m thinking of The Exorcist. You mustn’t underestimate priests. I ask about horoscopes. I’ve always wanted to know: it has to be possible to test them statistically. All you need is a hundred people who’ve died on the same day, either there will be significant similarities in their horoscopes or there won’t! Why doesn’t somebody do it?

He gapes at me like an idiot. Evidently I’ve offended him. Turning wine into blood is perfectly fine, but horoscopes are beneath his dignity. I pull out my phone. No answer. We’ve already reached the main floor.

We go through the lobby, the glass doors open. Dear God, it’s hot. My phone vibrates. Can you do it at five?

Why not now??? I text. A car horn blasts next to me, I realize I’m in the middle of the street — the restaurant is right over there, I go there every day. The décor is horrible, the waiters are arrogant, and I don’t like the food. But so what — I’m rarely hungry anyway, because of the medication I’m on.

The waiter pushes the table aside so that my fat brother can force his way onto the banquette. I order for the two of us, what I always order, spaghetti with shellfish. I don’t like mussels, but it’s an appropriate dish, not too much, not too heavy, not too few calories, not too cheap. My phone vibrates. Good, that’s fine. Now.

Martin asks me about the economy and my forecasts. I answer something or other. Why are we sitting here, what does he want? I can’t right now, I text. How does she think I live, does she believe I can just drop everything from one minute to the next, just because she feels lonely? Late afternoon, okay?

I wait. No answer. My brother asks things, I answer without even listening to myself. I look at the phone, put it aside, pick it up again, put it aside, pick it up. Why isn’t she answering?

“When you send someone a message,” I ask, “and he answers, and you answer back and ask for a quick answer and none comes, would you assume he didn’t get the message or that he’s simply not answering?”

“He or she?”

“What?”

He looks at me slyly. “You said ‘he’ and then you said ‘she.’ ”

Nuts. I know what I said. A laughably obvious trick. “And?”

“Nothing,” he says furtively.

What is he trying to get out of me, how has he managed to get me to talk about personal things? These priests are slick. “What do you want to know?”

“Nothing!”

His mouth is smeared with sauce. There are plates between us, his is almost empty, mine is untouched. When were they brought? “It doesn’t matter what kind of message,” I say. “It’s irrelevant.”

He murmurs something, trying to talk his way out of it.

Why isn’t she answering? “Perhaps it’s all part of what you do. Perhaps you have to be that inquisitive.”

My telephone vibrates. Okay, then later.

When? I write, and ask myself for the thousandth time how many servers this message will pass through and how many strangers can read it. Any one of them could blackmail me. Why does she force me into such careless behavior? “Do you still do exorcisms? Demonic possession. Do you still deal with that? Do you have people who do it?”

He gapes at me.

“What is the classic school of thought? Do you have to let a demon in when he comes? Does he need an invitation, or can he just take possession of someone?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Always a question to counter a question. Why can’t he just tell a person what they want to know? Because I’m afraid of ghosts, every day, all the time — is that what I should answer? “A book, just a book. I read this book. A strange book. Never mind.”

The phone vibrates. Already booked. Flight and hotel, leaving Saturday, back Sunday night, so looking forward.:-)

It takes me a moment to realize it’s from Laura. Since when does she book her own flights?

Wonderful! I write back. I will really need a good excuse.

I’ve barely hit the Send button when the phone vibrates again. How are you, call me if you have time! Martin.

Good. Stay calm. Always calm. I look up, there he is, sitting in front of me. Martin. My brother. I look at the phone, the message is still there. I look at his face. I look at the phone. Is it my imagination after all? Am I sitting here alone? His plate is empty, mine is full, which argues against that.

But why should it argue against it? I don’t know anymore, I’ve lost my train of thought. Anyone who can imagine a brother can also imagine an empty plate. Don’t panic. The main thing is to stay calm. Carefully, making sure not to hit any wrong button, I erase the message. Then I put away the phone and say, “This heat!” just in order to have something to say.

He asks about Laura and Marie, I answer him. I talk about my mother’s new TV broadcast, then ask after his mother. Obviously he spends all his time with her, poor bastard, it’s tragic. For all that, I like his mother, at least more than I do my own. Just as I’m about to ask him if it’s really necessary, all this visiting business, and if something shouldn’t be done about it, someone slaps me on the shoulder. Lothar Remling. The phone vibrates but I can’t look now. I jump up. Shoulder slapping. Punch in the upper arm. Football talk. Then he takes himself off. I can’t stand the guy, he almost wrecked the Ostermann deal for me a couple of years ago. Finally I can look. Three messages.

I can’t take it anymore.

Come later, come now, doesn’t matter.

Come now or don’t come at all.

I stand up, say something about an urgent appointment, and run.

The heat seems to have gotten even worse, it’s not far to go, she lives only ten blocks away. But I quickly register that today it would have been smarter to take the car.

I stop, pull out the phone. The free signal: once, twice, three times, four. Has she stopped answering when I call? Are we that far along?

Sibylle picks up. “What is it, Eric?”

“I have to see you.”

“But I wrote you that you can come right now.”

“But right now I can’t!”

I think she’s already disconnected, but she’s still there. “Eric, it’s unendurable. First the thing in the movie house, and now—”

“Don’t say any more! Not on the phone.”

“But—”

“Do you know how many people could hear us?”

“You called me!”

“Because I have to see you.”

“And I said come.”

“But I can’t right now.”

“Then don’t come.”

I feel dizzy. Did she really say I shouldn’t come? “Are you at home?”

She says nothing.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”

I listen, and only after a while do I realize she’s disconnected.

I have to sit down. Next to the street there’s an asphalt playground, surrounded by a wire fence, with a bench at its edge.

I sit there for some time with closed eyes. I hear the noise of the traffic: honking, engine sounds, a jackhammer. The sun is burning. My heartbeat steadies.

When I open my eyes, two children are sitting next to me. A boy with a baseball cap and a girl with long black hair that has a blue bow in it. She’s about six years old, he’s about ten.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I’m sitting,” I say. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sitting too.”

We look at the girl.

“Me too,” she says.

“Do you live around here?” I ask.

“A long way away,” she says. “And you?”

“Also a long way away,” I say.

“How old are you?” asks the boy.

“Thirty-seven.”

“That’s old,” says the girl.

“Yes,” I say. “That’s old.”

“Are you going to die soon?”

“No.”

“But you’ll die sometime.”

“No!”

We say nothing for a bit.

“Are you here to play?”

“Yes, but it’s too hot,” says the boy.

“You can’t do anything when it’s this hot,” says the girl.

“Do you have children?” he asks.

“A daughter. She’s about the same age as you.”

“Is she here too?”

“In school. She’s in school. Why aren’t you in school?”

“We’re playing hooky.”

“You shouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

I think. Absolutely no good reason presents itself to me. “Because it’s not okay,” I say hesitantly. “You have to learn.”

“You don’t learn much,” she says.

“If you don’t go for a day, you don’t miss anything at all,” he says.

“So you’re going back tomorrow?”

“Perhaps,” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

“Perhaps,” he says again.

“So what are your names?”

The girl shakes her head. “We’re not allowed to tell strangers our names.”

“I think you’re not supposed to talk to strangers at all.”

“Yes we can. Talking’s okay. But not telling anyone our names.”

“That’s strange,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “It’s strange.”

“Is she your sister?” I ask.

“He’s my brother,” she says.

“Do you go to the same school?”

The two of them look questioningly at each other. He shrugs.

I absolutely know that I’m in a hurry, that I should be moving on, that I have to get to Sibylle’s and then the conference. But instead of getting to my feet, I close my eyes again.

“Were you ever in a plane?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Why can it fly?”

“Because it has wings.”

“But a plane’s so heavy. Why can it fly?”

“The lift.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

“But why does it fly?”

“The lift.”

“What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“But you went to school.”

“Yes.”

“But why does it fly?”

The darkness behind my eyelids is lit by sunlight. Glowing orange with yellow circles in it that wander and rise and fall. Even the noise of the jackhammer suddenly sounds peaceful.

“Leave the three of them,” says the boy. “Don’t butt in, just keep going.”

“What?” I blink in the sun. “What did you say?”

“I said we have to go now.”

I stand up quickly. “Me too.”

“Josi,” says the boy. “My name’s Josi. That’s Ella.”

“And what is your name?” asks the girl.

“Hans.” I’m touched by the fact that they’ve given away their names, but that’s no reason to be careless.

“Bye, Hans!”

I leave and feel so light that I could just float up off the ground. Perhaps it’s the sun, perhaps it’s hunger. I should have eaten my pasta with mussels. In order not to faint, I stop at a fast-food stand.

There’s a long line. Three teenagers are standing ahead of me, arguing with the vendor. One of them is wearing a T-shirt that says Morning Tower, the second has one that says Bubbletea is not a drink I like, the third sports a huge bright red Y. Dumb, says one of them to the vendor, absolute bullshit, to which the vendor says they should go the hell away, to which one of them replies that the vendor is the one who should go the hell away, to which the vendor says no, he’d rather they went the hell away, to which another of them says no, you do it, and it goes on like that for a while. I’m about to give up and move on, but then they run off, cursing, and disappear down the next subway entrance and I can buy my hot dog. It tastes quite good. My phone rings. It’s Ivan. Reluctantly I press Receive.

“I thought I should give you a call,” he says.

“Why?”

“Just a feeling. Everything okay?”

“Of course.”

“So why do I have this feeling?”

“Maybe because today I hoped you and I … Ah!” Now I get it. I stand still in surprise. Cars hoot, a policeman yells at me, once again I’ve gotten myself into the street without even noticing.

“Why are you laughing?”

“I told my secretary to call you, but she … just think: she called Martin!”

“Martin!”

“We went to lunch. The whole time I was wondering why.”

“How’s business?”

“Good. Like always. How’s art?”

“I have to keep an eye on the auction houses. You can’t lose control over prices. Besides …”

“Have you spoken to Mother recently?”

“Yes, right, I have to give her a call soon. She left me three messages. But something’s up with you. I can tell. You can deny it, but—”

“Have to go now!”

“Eric, you can tell me every—”

“Everything’s fine, honestly, got to go now.”

“But how—”

I press the Disconnect button. It’s a strange experience talking to Ivan, almost like talking to myself, and suddenly I’m clear again about why I’ve been avoiding him for some time. It’s hard to keep secrets from him, he sees through me, just as I see through him, and he cannot find out just yet how bad things are with me and with business, it would be too painful, a great defeat, and besides I couldn’t be sure he’d keep it to himself. The old rule: a secret only stays a secret if absolutely nobody knows about it. If you stick to that, it’s not as hard to keep them as people think. You can know someone almost as well as you know yourself and still not read their thoughts. I cannot ask Ivan for money. I cannot ask him to help me disappear. He is too upright a person, and he wouldn’t understand.

I wish he weren’t homosexual. When I found out, it made me totally crazy for weeks. Someone who’s so like me — what does that say about me, what does it mean? Nothing, I know that, nothing, nothing, it means absolutely nothing, but I’ve never been able to forgive him.

I send a message to Knut — the address, and instructions to set off at once. Then I open Sibylle’s front door, run up three flights of stairs, want to wait outside her apartment door to get my breath back, but am too impatient for that, and knock. I could also ring the bell, but after she snubbed me like that, I need to make a more impressive entrance.

She opens the door. I’m immediately struck by how good she looks. She isn’t as beautiful as Laura, but she’s more exciting: the long hair, the delicate neck, the bare arms with their colorful bangles. She was my therapist, but she stopped treating me six months ago because, she said, it would be a breach of professional ethics. It doesn’t matter anyway, the therapy was totally pointless, I told her nothing but lies.

“Is the bell broken?”

I walk across the hall and into the living room. There I catch my breath, search for words, and fail to find any.

“Poor guy. Come here.”

I clench my fists, inhale, open my mouth, but can’t say a word.

“Poor guy,” she says again, and already we’re on the carpet. I want to protest and get the two of us to pull ourselves together, for that’s what matters most, knowing how to pull yourself together, but it doesn’t help, because I suddenly realize that I don’t want us to pull ourselves together, what I want is what is going on right here, in her and over her and on her, and why not, because without this, what else is there in the world?

“But—”

“It’s all right,” she whispers in my ear. “It’s all right.”

It’s hot, she has no air-conditioning, she thinks it makes you sick. It seems to me as if I were on my feet and taking a step back so as to watch the two of us: a trifle strange, the whole thing, more foolish than awkward, and I wonder if people who love to discourse on human dignity have ever actually observed this with a sober eye. But at the same time I’m still the man on the carpet and I feel that the moment is about to arrive when I am no longer divided but a single entity, and only for a few fractions of a second do I form the thought that I’m setting myself up for blackmail if there’s a camera in this room, and then I have an image of Laura, whom I’m deceiving again and to whom I’m doing an injustice with my continual lies, but a moment later the image is gone again and all I know is that every person must do what will save him, and everything is finally what it is, and nothing else, and everything is good.

We lie on our backs, her head on my chest. I don’t want to be anywhere else, nothing is bothering me. It won’t last very long.

“How is she?” asks Sibylle.

I have to think to figure out who she means. I cradle her head, and stroke her silky hair. Very soon everything that is bearing down on me will become real again.

“Perhaps I could help her.”

I pull my hand away.

“I mean, I could recommend a colleague. Ancillary talk therapy. When she’s recovered, we can all get on with our lives. She with hers. And the two of us with ours. Together.”

At the beginning I didn’t have any specific plan, it was one of many tales that I spun, but later it turned out to be helpful: no one leaves a wife who has cancer, no one can demand it of anyone else. And sometimes I feel this version is actually true, as if it were playing out in a parallel universe exactly as I’ve told it to Sibylle. I could talk about it with a therapist, but Sibylle doesn’t want to treat me anymore and I wouldn’t want to try it with anyone else, I’ve got enough problems already.

“I have to leave right away,” I say.

How peculiar that I spend all day thinking about her and yet want only to disappear as soon as I’m with her. Gently I push her head to one side, stand up, and start gathering my clothes together.

“You’re always in a hurry.” She laughs sadly. “You leave me sitting in the cinema and then you write such messages! My therapist asked why I do it to myself. Because you’re good-looking? I said he’s not that good-looking, but then she wanted to see a photo and I couldn’t lie about it. Or is it because of this?” She points at the carpet. “Yes, it’s good, it’s really good, but it’s also a kind of transference. My therapist thinks I show reactions that are triggered quite automatically by the collision of regression and aggression. What can I do?”

I clear my throat in an empathetic sort of way, climb into my trousers, button my shirt, tie my tie without using a mirror, and manage to look as though I knew what she’s talking about.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “You’ll make it. You’re stronger than you think.”

“I know.”

She smiles, as if she’d made some enigmatic joke. I smile too and go out of the room. I rush down the stairs and run along the street. There’s an office building on the other side, I take the back entrance, ride up to the second floor, go into Starbucks, and get a soy milk cappuccino with extra froth, so that Knut will see I really have been in the building. Then I ride down again and leave by the other exit. I see Knut immediately.

He’s having an argument with a street sweeper and it looks serious. The man has lifted his broom to use as a weapon, Knut is making fists, and both are emitting an uninterrupted torrent of curses. It’s the heat, everyone is on edge today. Interested, I listen.

“Pig!” roars Knut.

“Son of a bitch!” roars the street sweeper.

“Shithead!”

“Son of a pig!”

“Pig, pig, pig!”

I’m enjoying this, but I don’t have time. So I swallow a mouthful of coffee, put the container on the ground, and approach Knut.

“Lousy, old, greasy, fat pig!” screams Knut. “Baldy! Pig shit!”

I push him at the driver’s door, then get into the backseat.

It’s blissfully cool in the car. As Knut starts to drive, still cursing quietly, my phone vibrates. I see the number and take the call, apprehensively.

“Mother?”

“Be quiet and listen. I—”

“How’s the practice?”

“Far too successful. The whole country wants to have me as their doctor. All because of the broadcast. I—”

“It’s a very interesting program.” I’ve only seen it once. “We never miss a follow-up.”

“I’m an eye doctor. I understand absolutely nothing about all these illnesses. All I do is tell people they should go and see their doctor.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“I wanted to propose an investment to you.”

“A … aha.”

“It’s about some property. My — below our house. Someone wants to buy it, to build on. We have to beat them to it. It would ruin the view.”

“Ah.”

“It would be a good investment.”

“I don’t know.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

I try to think about the previous minutes on the carpet. About Sibylle’s breath next to my ear, about her body in my arms, her hair, her smell. But none of it helps. I have to be back with her again immediately, naked on the carpet again immediately, and probably not even that would suffice.

“Why don’t you say something?” Mother asks. “Why is it impossible to have a normal conversation with you?”

“I can’t hear you anymore!” I call. “Bad connection!”

“I hear you perfectly well.”

“What are you saying?” I hit the Disconnect button.

“Bad connection,” I say to Knut. “It’s become impossible to have a telephone call these days.”

“They should all be locked up!”

“Why?”

“They’re all nuts!”

“Who?”

“All locked up, I said. Nuts, all of them!”

The phone vibrates. I put my thumb on the Disconnect button, but then I answer anyway.

“Do you hear me better now?” she asks. “It’s become impossible to have a telephone call these days.”

“The connection was fine. I hung up.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yes I did.”

“You wouldn’t just simply hang up if you were talking to your mother. You wouldn’t do it.”

“Buy the property yourself. You’re making enough money with the program.”

“But it’s a good investment.”

“How can it be a good investment? You say I’m not allowed to build anything.”

“Do you want to ruin my view? What do you want to build?”

“I don’t want to build. I don’t want to have it at all!”

“Don’t you scream at me! When your mother asks you—”

I hit the Disconnect button. A few seconds later the phone vibrates again. I ignore it. Then I think for a while, stare at the phone, rub my eyes, and call back.

“You hung up!” she said. “I know. Don’t lie!”

“I have no intention of lying.”

“I wouldn’t believe that either.”

“So.”

“Don’t ever do that again!”

“I’ll do what I want. I’m an adult.”

She gives a mocking laugh, and I hit the Disconnect button with a shaking hand.

I wait, but she doesn’t call again. To be on the safe side, I switch the gadget off. I remember that Sibylle recently said something astonishingly astute about my mother, which was all the more surprising because she knows nothing about my mother; it was so obviously accurate that I must have had to suppress it immediately, for all I remember about it is that it was so to the point.

Knut begins to tell a story about a Marine, an ancient monkey, and a gardener from Thailand, and it also features a watering can, a plane, and, if I’m getting it right, a professor of numismatics. I nod from time to time and become convinced the whole thing would make no sense whatever even if I were paying attention. When we get there, it’s ten past four. The conference has already begun.

I get out of the car, walk through the heat into the cool of the lobby, and enter the elevator. Perhaps they’ve actually been waiting for me.

The elevator is already starting its ascent. It stops at the fourth floor, no one gets in. It’s just going up again when my knees give way and my head slams against the wall.

I hear something. It’s all dark around me. What I’m hearing is sobbing. I manage to straighten up a little. Slowly the shadow dissolves. I grope my head: no blood. Now I can see the dirty green threads in the carpeting. The person sobbing in here is me. I don’t know what it is, but something terrible has happened. Something that should never have been allowed to happen. Something that will never come good again.

I stand up. I’m not the only thing swaying, the elevator cabin is swaying too: seventh floor, eighth floor, ninth floor. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I wipe away my tears and check my watch: fourteen minutes past four. Note the day, note the time: August 8, 2008, fourteen minutes past four. You’ll find out what this means soon enough. The cabin stops, the doors open. At the last moment before they close again, I leap out.

I have to stay leaning against the wall for a bit, then I walk through the office in a daze. Everything seems different from the way it was before, every desk, every face, every object. I enter the conference room and murmur my excuses, because of course they have started without me. I take off my jacket, throw it over an empty chair, sit down, and manage to look as if everything is in order. At this I am an expert.

The sight of my colleagues depresses me even more than usual: all that lethargy, all that mediocrity. Possibly it is also to do with the fact that I only hire mediocre people. The last thing I need is someone who sees through me. Lehmann and Schröter are here, Kelling, whose daughter is my godchild, Pöhlke, whom I’d fire in a moment if only he gave me an excuse, because I just don’t like him. Maria Gudschmid is here, and so is the guy whose name I can never remember. And Felsner. I like him, but I don’t know why. When I came in, Lehmann had just been speaking. Now they’re all still, looking at me and waiting.

I take a breath. I’m hoarse and I feel as if I might burst into tears again, but I still have to say something. So I stammer out a few phrases about pleasurable working conditions and the good things we make, and I quote the Bhagavad Gita: Here you stand, Arjuna, so do not ask, stand up and fight, for God hates the lukewarm. Not a bad address, I think. They don’t know that they will soon be unemployed; some will be suspected of having collaborated, but the truth will come out: they are not criminals, they are merely incompetent.

The bit about God and the lukewarm, says Maria Gudschmid, isn’t in the Bhagavad Gita, it’s from the Bible.

The danger, says Kelling, that Triple A bonds could lose a significant portion of their value, can be discounted in practical terms. Triple A’s are and will remain classical value investments and thus risk free.

A problem arises, says Pöhlke, that it’s a known fact that investment banks invested in the very positions they were actively offering for sale to smaller firms. They thus set the value themselves of what they were selling; in other words, they unilaterally decided how much their customers owed them.

At some point, Felsner says, there will be a class-action suit against this system. But at the moment the only thing to do is wait. There has been an announcement that Krishna’s next avatar will appear before this epoch of ours is over.

Which doesn’t mean that it’s certain that the avatar will have to be human, says Maria Gudschmid.

If for example anyone is holding significant insurance paper, says Lehmann, it would be impossible to calculate the extent of exposure in the event of a collapse of the large derivative conglomerates. There is, he says, no tool to work out a reasonable rate of risk.

“Kluessen wants to withdraw his money,” I say.

At a stroke the room falls silent.

But hopefully it’s not yet a sure thing, says Felsner. And there are certainly things we can still do.

Not a good moment to lose our most important account, in Maria’s view.

In an emergency there are tricks, says Lehmann. If for example the value of a set of assets cannot be reliably established because of a legally suspect asymmetry in the market, the trustee has the right to freeze those assets on a temporary basis. Even against the wishes of the owner.

Pure theory, says Schörter. No court would accept such an argument.

To get back to the problem with the investment banks, says Pöhlke. His proposal: short a few of them, without great investment.

Only to him that dares, says Lehmann, will Krishna give.

Quite a few dare, is Pöhlke’s infuriated retort, and Krishna does not give. The god has freedom of action, because he is freedom itself.

Which is why bad people sometimes get the lot, says Kelling, while good people get nothing. The risk potential in the lower reaches of the mortgage pool is not good, and—

“Thank you!” I stand up. Until now I’ve kept a straight face, I’ve stayed sitting with my back straight and haven’t given anything away. Now I’ve had enough.

“Just one more question,” calls Schröter.

The door closes behind me.

On the way to the elevator I wonder about how to establish that I really did hear what I think I heard. But if I ask someone, he could lie, and even a recording can be manipulated.

“Now it’s happened,” says the man next to me in the elevator. “Now it’s all coming to an end.”

He’s wearing a hat and his teeth are hideous. I’ve seen him already today, but I can’t remember where. He doesn’t look right at me but talks to my reflection in the mirror on the back wall of the elevator, so that it is not he but his reflection that stares at me fixedly. Apart from us there are two other men standing there with briefcases, but they are looking straight ahead and paying no attention to us.

“What did you say?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says.

I turn away.

“Sometimes every path is the wrong one,” he says.

I stare at him.

“The truth will set you free,” he says. “Nice if it were so. But sometimes there is absolutely nothing that can set you free anymore. Neither lies nor the truth.” He straightens his hat with an affected gesture. “At bottom there is no longer any difference between the two, Ivan.”

“Excuse me?”

He frowns.

“What did you just say? About lies and truth? Did you call me Ivan?”

Now the two men with the briefcases are watching us, concerned. Yes, that’s how it goes, that’s how they shatter your nerves. And then all of a sudden, you grab someone and yell and start hitting them and then they can put you away. But I’m not going to make it that easy for them.

“Apologies,” I say. “I must have misheard.”

“You think?” asks the man with the hat.

The elevator stops, one of the briefcase men gets out and a woman in a black jacket gets in. They’ve practiced really well, everything looks natural. You could watch for hours and never have any suspicion.

“You’re not going to hold out very much longer,” he says.

I don’t react.

“Keep running. Look good in your suit. Keep running for as long as you can. You look the worse for wear.”

I don’t react.

“You have to know, today is not a day like any other. Sometimes it’s easier. Death brings us closer.”

The elevator stops, the doors open, I get out without turning around. I go out to the street, the heat has abated a bit, it will soon be evening. Knut is sitting in the car with the engine running. Did I tell him to wait for me? I get in.

“Question,” he says.

“Not now.”

“Municipal bonds — should you, shouldn’t you, how does it look?”

How cool and quiet it is in the car. A good make of car, clean, tank full, with a chauffeur at the wheel, all give me more peace than the finest of religions.

“To be specific,” says Knut. “My aunt. Dead. Bad thing. I told you about it. The building site. The crane.”

“Yes, I know.” As always, I haven’t a clue.

“But it was also her fault. She shouldn’t have hidden where she did. Nobody made her do that, did they?”

“No.”

“In any case, none of us would have thought she had a hundred thousand euros. We just didn’t know. Particularly not after the thing with the innkeeper and the burglars. And also because she was always so stingy. Nothing ever at Christmas. Nor to the children. So now, what do we do? There’s this old guy next door, his son is with the bank. I don’t like him. He doesn’t like me either. Particularly not after the whole thing with his dog. He stated that the beast was never in our garden, but I have two witnesses. So — municipal bonds. His son’s idea. Mitznik.”

“What?”

“That’s what the old guy is called. And he stutters! Municipal bonds. Mitznik’s his name. So what now, boss, are they okay? Municipal bonds?”

“Yes, pretty much.”

“But do they pay anything?”

For no apparent reason he brakes sharply; luckily my seat belt is fastened. He hits the horn and then drives on. “I want to make some money! If there’s nothing in it, I’m out!”

“The more reliable an investment is, the less it pays. The highest wins you can make are in a casino, because the odds there are so terrible. Investing is gambling with good odds.”

“Can I give it to you, boss?”

“Me?”

“Will you invest it for me, boss?”

“We don’t accept such small investments.”

“But for me? As a favor? For a friend?”

Did he really call me a friend? The maneuver is transparent, but it moves me. “A hundred thousand?”

“Maybe even a bit more.”

Well, it would be enough to pay the rent on the office space for a while. Later that would make him one joint plaintiff among many, that’s no longer the point.

I shake my head.

“Boss!”

“It wouldn’t be right. Believe me.”

“Why?” He coughs, then he emits a series of high, sharp sounds. They could be sounds of rage, or they could be sobs.

“You just have to believe me. It’s better this way.”

He brakes, opens the window, and screams at someone. I can’t understand it all, but the words animal, pig-ignorant, and child abuser emerge, along with something about strangulation. He’s already driving on.

“Well, okay,” I say.

“Really?”

“For you, I’ll make an exception.”

“Boss!”

“It’s fine!”

“Boss?”

“Please, it’s fine.”

But he brakes again, turns around, and reaches for my hand. At first I manage to avoid it, but then he gets hold of my shirt cuff. “I’d die for you.”

“That’s really not necessary.”

“I’d kill for you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean it. Just give me a name.”

“Please—”

“I’ll kill him.”

“Keep driving!”

“It’s not a joke.”

How can I avoid thinking about Kluessen? A car accident, a suddenly induced and mysterious heart ailment.… Luckily Knut lets it go and keeps driving. I close my eyes and manage to black out his ongoing monologue. It occurs to me that my phone is still switched off. This explains why no one from the office has called me to ask where on earth I’ve gotten to.

We’ve already reached home. If you drive early, you avoid the rush hour. I evade Knut’s last effusions of thanks, get out, and stride along the gravel path through the garden like the very image of a man accustomed to overcoming obstacles. I unlock the front door, go in, and call, “I’m home!”

No answer.

There was no anticipation that I would be back so early. The house is silent, as if I’d caught it getting up to something. So this is what it’s like when I’m not here. I call out again. My voice sounds lost in the large hall.

Then I hear something.

Not a knocking, more a scraping noise. It sounds like heavy metal objects being shoved around. I cock my ears, but it’s already stopped. Just as I decide I must have made a mistake, it starts again.

It’s coming from below me, in the cellar. Should I call someone, a plumber or the fire department? But if someone came and there was nothing to hear, what would that make me look like? I go into the kitchen and wash my hands. And there it goes again. The window shakes, the glasses in the cupboard clink gently. I dry my hands. Now all is quiet.

And then I hear it again.

Under no circumstances am I going to go down to the cellar on my own.

I listen. It’s stopped.

It starts again.

I cross the hall and undo the heavy bolt on the cellar door. I’ve never been down there — why would I? It’s where we store our wine bottles, but that’s not my job, Laura’s the one who takes care of all that.

A flight of stairs leads down; two naked bulbs cast a rather spotted light on the treads. Three old posters are glued up on the brick wall: Yoda, Darth Vader, and some naked woman — I’ve never seen any of them before. At the bottom is a metal door. I open it, grope for the light switch, and locate it. The air is musty. A bulb crackles as it comes on.

A long space, a low ceiling, a large wine rack against the wall, half empty. That’s my wine collection, that’s what I spent all that money on? In one corner there’s a tin bucket lying on its side, in the opposite wall I see another door. The noise has ceased. I move slowly through the room and push the lever of the door handle down. I feel a rush of cold air: another flight of steps. I feel for the switch: the light goes on.

This bulb is dirty and flickers badly. It must already be old. The treads are narrow. I put out my right foot and take a cautious step onto the top one, pause for a moment to collect myself, and then go slowly down.

There it is again. A dull thump, a dragging noise, a sort of squeal, of the kind made by the pistons of a large machine. But I cannot turn around. Succumb to your anxieties too often and you become small and pathetic. This is my house. Perhaps this is the critical test, perhaps now everything will change.

Silence falls.

I reach the bottom without a sound to be heard, except for my own breathing and the beating of my heart. It’s cold. How deep is it down here? Another door, which I open; another light switch.

I hear it again. This room is surprisingly large, at least fifteen by thirty meters. Stone walls, the floor hard earth, two bulbs in the ceiling, only one of which is working. I see a crumpled cloth, and next to it a curved metal rod, one end rounded like the head of a walking stick, the other filed to a sharp point. Two doors: I try one, it’s locked. I rattle it, but it doesn’t budge. But the other one opens and on the other side is yet another set of steps. No light switch.

I stare down into the darkness, and try to count the treads. I can’t make out more than nine.

Enough! I’m not going any farther!

I go farther, one step after the other, my left hand flat against the wall, my right hand clutching the phone with its feeble glow. When did the noise stop? I haven’t even noticed. Another two steps. And another. And yet another. Now I’ve reached the floor.

In front of me is a door, which I try to open, but it’s locked tight. I can feel the relief. There’s nothing more here, I can go back. I try it once again, and it opens without the slightest resistance.

I grope my way forward. Under me is a step made of steel, and the wall next to me is curved. After a moment I get it: a spiral staircase. The shaft goes straight down vertically. I search my pockets and find a ballpoint pen made of plastic. I hold it out with my arm and let it drop.

I wait. No sound of an impact. Probably the pen was too small and too light. I search my pockets again and find a wallet, a metal lighter, a key ring, and coins. I only have the lighter so as to be able to offer it to smokers. I snap it open. The flame, much brighter than the phone, lets me see the steps better. I hold it out over the shaft and it flickers. So air is streaming up from down there. I hesitate, then let it fall. The flame dwindles and is swallowed up in the darkness. No sound of an impact.

But I hear something else. I listen, wait, listen, the vibrations are getting stronger: something is hitting the steps. It takes me a few seconds to realize that someone is coming up the stairs. Toward me.

Then it goes dark.

And slowly the light returns. We’re sitting at dinner: Laura, Marie, Laura’s father, Laura’s mother, Laura’s sister and brother-in-law, and two children, all around the table, which has been set.

“It’s supposed to stay this hot all week,” says Laura.

“Every summer worse than the one before,” says her sister. “Nobody knows where you can even take the children.”

“A house in Scandinavia,” says my father-in-law. “Or on the North Sea.” He looks at me. “Like your brother’s. Everyone could use one.”

“We could visit him,” I am obliged to say. I would like to eat, because I’m really hungry, but my hands are shaking too badly.

Now my father-in-law is talking about politics. I nod at regular intervals, as does everyone else. He’s an architect, and in the seventies he built one of the ugliest concrete buildings in the country, which earned him the National Medal. He gestures deliberately and makes long pauses before he says anything he thinks is important. That’s how you have to do it, that’s how you have to be, that’s how you have to present yourself, and then you’ll be respected. I admire him, I always wanted to be like him; and who knows, maybe in reality he’s a little like me.

The trembling has eased up. Very carefully I push food into my mouth. Luckily nobody’s watching me.

Or? Now everyone’s looking at me. What is it, what did I get wrong, what did I mess up? Apparently Laura has said something about a trip to Sicily. They’re all smiling and being pleased and saying how wonderful.

“Do please excuse me,” I say. “Urgent call. Be right back.”

“You work too much,” says Laura.

“Everyone has to indulge themselves a little,” says my father-in-law. He pauses for thought, and then goes on in a tone that suggests he’s imparting hidden wisdom to us: “A man must know how to live.”

I ask myself if he’s ever in his entire life uttered one single phrase that isn’t a thousand times well-worn cliché. I envy him greatly.

On my way to my study I pass the open door to the salon. Ligurna, our Lithuanian maid, greets me looking tragic. I nod to her and hurry on past. A year ago in a moment of weakness I slept with her. Unfortunately it happened not in the kitchen or on my desk but in the master bedroom in our marriage bed. Afterward Ligurna searched carpet and bedside table like a skilled detective for hairs, eyelashes, any other traces: nonetheless I was afraid for weeks that she could have overlooked something. Since then I’ve only spoken to her when it’s unavoidable. I can’t throw her out, she could blackmail me.

I sit behind the desk, swallow two tranquilizers without water, look at the Paul Klee, look at the Eulenboeck on the opposite wall: a canvas covered with a collage of newspaper cuttings, with a crushed Coca-Cola can and a teddy bear glued in the middle. You have to go right up close to realize that it’s all trompe l’oeil. The bear and the can aren’t real, nor are the bits of newspaper; it’s all painted in oils. If you examine the cuttings with a magnifying glass, you see they’re all art criticism about collages.

The painting is from Eulenboeck’s later period, his most valuable. I got to know the old poseur, he was very condescending, very white-haired, and never stopped making really stupid jokes about Ivan and me and how uncannily alike we were. Obviously he thought he knew me well, because he knew Ivan well. It cost one hundred and seventy thousand, supposedly a discounted price for a friend. But all the same it’s got that teddy bear. He gives me joy. I know it’s all a parody of something and nothing in it means what it’s supposed to mean, but I don’t care. On the short list of things that aren’t horrible in my life, that bear is right up there.

What luck that these days you can order every medication on the Internet. How would someone like me have coped fifteen years ago? I cross my arms and lean back. I would like to work in order to relax a bit, but I have nothing to do. Without hope, there’s leisure.

There’s a knock. Laura looks in. “Do you have a moment?”

“Unfortunately not.”

She sits down, crosses her legs, and looks first at the Paul Klee, then at me.

“Is it about Marie?”

“It’s about me.”

“You?”

“Imagine, Eric. It’s about me.”

This I needed. Is she going to tell me another dream? Or has someone offered her a role? That would be truly bad news.

“I’ve had an offer. A role.”

“But that’s wonderful!”

“Nothing big, but at least it’s a start. It’s not easy going back again after fifteen years.”

“You’re even more beautiful than you were then!”

Not bad. It didn’t take me half a second to come up with that, the sentence is all prepared and always at hand. Of course she isn’t more beautiful than she used to be, why should she be, but she’s slimmer and the exercise has paid off, and fine mature lines around her eyes look good on her. She could certainly have a career in movies. I have to stop it.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes?”

“I must concentrate on myself.”

She stops, evidently to give me the chance to reply. But what do I say?

“It’s only for a while, Eric. To begin with. We’re not separating yet. Everything will sort itself out.”

She looks at me. I look at her.

“Eric, what is it?”

She pushes her hair off her face and waits. Apparently it’s up to me to say something, but what does she want to hear, what’s she talking about?

“I would move out, but it’s impractical. I have to look after Marie, and I also need Ligurna. It’s better if you look and find somewhere else. Then you wouldn’t have such a long journey to the office.”

“To the office?”

“Besides which the house is close to school. I won’t be able to be home much while they’re shooting. Of course you can see Marie whenever you want.”

I nod, because now I understand what she’s saying, even if it makes no sense. The words have a meaning, apparently the sentences do too, but when you put them together, they’re so empty that she could be talking pure nonsense.

“Eric, I can’t get caught up in your games right now.”

I nod as if I understand. Luckily I don’t have to say anything at first, for she stands up and keeps talking. Through a fog I hear her voice speaking about long, lonely hours and how I’m perpetually busy and how money and cold rationality don’t take precedence over everything else. After a while she stops, sits down again, and waits. I look at her helplessly.

“Don’t try that with me,” she says. “Your tricks. Your negotiating tricks. All your tricks. I know you. It doesn’t work with me.”

I open my mouth, take a breath, shut it again.

She talks on. Her arms are so fine, her hands delicate and elegant, again and again the desk lamp catches the diamond ring on her middle finger so that it flashes sparks. Now she’s saying I mustn’t think that it has anything to do with another man, there is no other man, if I thought any such thing I’d be wrong, because there most certainly isn’t another man and I shouldn’t think anything else.

I concentrate on continuing to look at her attentively, and not letting myself get distressed by the fact that the color has drained out of everything and my face feels as if it’s made of cotton wool.

“Answer me, Eric! Stop it! Say something!”

But when I try to search for a reply, everything just retreats still further. I’m back in the cellar, way down, even deeper than I was, and something is coming up the stairs, someone is speaking. Words put themselves together, it’s dark, and there’s a hundredweight pressing down on me. The voice seems somehow not unfamiliar, and from somewhere a crack of light comes in. The window by the desk. I feel as if much time has passed, but Laura is still sitting there talking.

“To begin with everything can go on like normal,” she says. “We can behave as if nothing had happened. We’d fly to Sicily. Next week we’ll go together to the party at the Lohnenkovens’. In the meantime you can look for an apartment. We don’t have to make it hard for ourselves.”

I clear my throat. Did I really pass out here at my desk in front of her eyes, without noticing? Who the hell are the Lohnenkovens?

“I’m not talking about a divorce just yet. It doesn’t have to go that far. But if it does, we have to be sensible. Of course you have good lawyers. That’s the same for me. I spoke to Papa. He’s behind me.”

I nod. But who are they, who are the Lohnenkovens?

“Okay.” She gets to her feet, pushes her hair back off her face, and leaves.

I open the drawer and pick three, four, five pills out of the plastic packet. As I leave the room, my legs seem to belong to someone else, as if I were a marionette, being manipulated by a not-very-skilled puppet master.

In the dining room, they’re all still sitting at the table.

“All done, your call?” My father-in-law smiles at me.

Next to him, Laura smiles too. Her mother smiles, her sister smiles, her daughters smile, only Marie yawns. I have no idea what call he’s talking about.

“Laura,” I say slowly, “did we just … have you …” It could be the effect of the pills. They’re strong, and I took a lot of them. I could have imagined the whole thing.

Or? I took the pills precisely because of Laura. If she hadn’t come to me, I wouldn’t have swallowed so many. So the pills can’t be the reason that I’m imagining Laura said things that made me take the pills. Or?

“Bad news?” My father-in-law is still smiling.

“You should lie down,” says Laura.

“Yes,” says my mother-in-law. “You’re pale. Better go to bed.”

I wait, but no one says anything more. They all smile. I leave the room unsteadily.

Right foot down the first step. I avoid looking in the direction of the cellar door, because I know that if the bolt isn’t fully closed or the door is actually open, my heart will stop. I go through the hall and open the front door.

It’s dark, but the air is still very hot. To my right, pressed against the wall, crouches a shaggy-coated creature that stares at me. Its smell is acrid and biting. As I stop, it bounds away on cloven feet and disappears into the blackness of the hedge.

I haul up the garage door. Knut is already off duty, I have to drive myself. Perhaps I shouldn’t be doing this, given the state I’m in, but I’ll manage it somehow. The engine rumbles into life and the car rolls onto the street. I see my house in the rearview mirror. A pale glow of light is emanating from the attic. Who could be up there?

But I’ve already rounded the corner.

Please no accident now, not after all the pills. This time I’m not calling Sibylle, I want to surprise her.

And if she isn’t alone?

The thought cuts through my daze. The car swerves into the middle of the street, horns blare, but I get it under control again. If there’s a man with her, I’ll have to kill him! I turn the steering wheel and a yellow plastic garbage container gets in my way. I dodge, but it hits the right side of the car so hard that the lid flies off and cardboard boxes go sailing all over the street. I brake, and the car stops. Pedestrians are staring at me. A car stops on the other side of the street; two men get out and come toward me.

I’m ready to step on the gas and run them over, but that’s what they intend: I’m supposed to lose control of myself. I get out, fists clenched.

“Do you need help?” one of them asks.

“Are you hurt?” asks the other.

I start to run. I run through a narrow alley, jump over the fence surrounding a building site, clamber over an excavator shovel and another fence, and keep running until I lose my breath and look around with a pounding heart. No one seems to be following me. But how can I be sure? They’re so cunning.

A pedestrian zone. I detour around two women, a policeman, and two youths, Adolf Kluessen, and two more women. Kluessen? Yes, I saw him quite clearly, either it was Kluessen himself or they sent someone who looks just like him. For a moment Maria Gudschmid’s face surfaces under a streetlight, but this at least means nothing, because all sorts of women look just like her. I leave the pedestrian zone, cross a street, walk up a narrow ramp, and reach the front door of Sibylle’s building. It’s locked. I press the buzzer.

“Yes?” It’s her voice in the loudspeaker, and it comes so quickly that she must have been waiting at the door — but not for me, she didn’t know I’m coming, so who’s she waiting for?

“It’s me,” I say into the microphone.

“Who?”

If she doesn’t let me in now, if she doesn’t open the door at once, if she makes me stand out here on the street, it’s over.

“Eric?”

I don’t reply. The door opens with a hum.

Someone touches my arm. Behind me there’s a thin man with a long nose and a narrow chin. In one hand he’s holding the handlebars of a bicycle, and in the other he has a well-worn plastic shopping bag.

“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” he says. “You should have left the three of them alone. It was none of your business.”

I slam the door behind me and run up the stairs. If she has a man with her, if there’s a man, if she, if … her floor. She’s standing in the doorway.

“So what’s wrong?” she asks.

“The thing with the car should never have happened. Just left standing like that. What will people think!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I must report it stolen.”

I walk past her into the apartment. There’s no one here. She’s alone. I sink down onto the nearest chair and switch on my cell phone. Nine calls, three from my office, six from home, three text messages. I switch it off again.

“What’s happened, Eric?”

I want to answer that absolutely nothing has happened, that everything has simply become too much for me. I want to answer that I’m just stuck. But all I say is “It’s been a hard day.” And as I’m looking at her, I realize I don’t even want to be here with her. I want to go home.

“I wanted to be with you,” I say.

She comes closer, I stand up and manage to do everything necessary. My hands go where they’re supposed to, my movements are the right ones, and I even succeed in enjoying the fact that this is what she wants so much, and that she’s soft and smells good and maybe even loves me a little.

“Me too,” she whispers, and I ask myself what I’ve gone and said again now.

Afterward I lie there awake, listening to her breathing and looking up at the dark expanse of ceiling. I mustn’t go to sleep, I have to be home before dawn comes and Laura wants to tell me her dream.

I get up silently and put on my clothes. Sibylle doesn’t wake up. I slide out of the room on tiptoe.