Night Work

11

The camera was in its place.

He looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed.

He threw off the duvet. No injuries.

He went over to the mirror. His face, too, looked unmarked.

*

Jonas was already well-acquainted with the DIY store in Adalbert-Stifter-Strasse. He drove the Spider down the aisle until it became too narrow, then went looking on foot. He found a torch and some industrial gloves right away. The furniture trolley took longer. He strode briskly round the silent store. It was half an hour before he thought of looking in the stock room. There were dozens of trolleys in there. He loaded one into the boot.

He drove back and forth across the 20th District, steered the car along the narrow streets of the Karmeliter quarter in the 2nd, crossed over to the 3rd, performed a U-turn in Landstrasse and combed the 2nd again. That, he figured, was where he was likeliest to find what he was looking for.

He could generally tell, without getting out of the car, whether a machine beside the kerb was unsuitable. A Vespa wouldn’t do, nor would a Maxi or even a Honda Goldwing. He wanted a 1960s Puch DS, 50 cc, top speed forty k.p.h.

He spotted one in Nestroygasse, but the key was missing. Another was parked in Franz-Hochedlinger-Gasse. Again no key. Someone in Lilienbrunngasse had also been a fan of ancient mopeds. No key.

He called in at Hollandstrasse and looked round the flat. Nothing had changed. He looked into the backyard through the bedroom window. It was like a rubbish dump.

He suddenly remembered what he had dreamt of last night.

The dream had consisted of a single image. A bound skeleton lay on its back on the ground. Both feet in a single oversized leather boot. It was being slowly dragged across a field by a lasso tied to the saddle of a horse whose head could not be seen. Only the rider’s legs were visible.

The image stood before him quite distinctly. A skeleton with a stout rope wrapped around its ribcage, the horse dragging it along. The feet in the boot. The skeleton’s slow progress across the grass.

*

He was driving along Obere Augartenstrasse when he spotted another one. Exactly what he was looking for. A DS 50 with the key in it. Pale blue, like the one he himself had owned. He estimated its date of manufacture at 1968 or 1969.

He turned on the fuel tap, climbed aboard and trod on the kick-starter. At first he gave too little throttle, then too much. The engine sprang to life at the third attempt, sounding far louder than he’d expected. Although he wobbled for the first few yards, he had the moped under control by the time he drove through the gates into the Augarten.

It was a peculiar sensation, riding along the park’s dusty paths on a DS. At sixteen he’d worn a visored crash helmet and had never felt the wind on his face, or not to this extent. Nor had the sound of the engine ever punctured such a silence.

On the long, tree-lined straight that ran past the park café he opened the throttle as far as it would go. The speedometer read forty k.p.h., but the moped was doing at least sixty-five. Its owner had been more skilful at souping up an engine than Jonas had been in his day. His one good idea had been to remove the exhaust mufflers, which had had no appreciable effect on the moped’s speed but had made it sound much louder.

After circling the anti-aircraft tower he left the paths and veered off across the grass. He avoided the areas with tall hedges. Jonas didn’t care for hedges. Particularly when they were trimmed with excessive care. And it was still clear that these had been. Trees, shrubs, hedges — all had been neatly pruned and clipped.

*

I’m just overhead — only a few kilometres above you.

*

Jonas made his way into the café. After he’d checked the rather small premises, he brewed himself a coffee and took it out into the garden.

Although the Augarten had never appealed to him much, he’d sat here several times. With Marie, whom he’d had to accompany to a series of al fresco film shows on summer evenings. Shuffling around on his chair and yawning furtively, he had gone there for Marie’s sake, drunk beer or tea, eaten at the multicultural buffet and been plagued by mosquitoes. They seldom bit him, but the sound of them had more than once driven him to distraction.

He had waited for Marie here at the café, 100 yards from the cinema and the buffet, which operated only during the film season. He’d watched cheeky sparrows land on tables and peck at titbits. Shooed away wasps and scowled at old ladies’ yapping poodles. But he hadn’t been really annoyed because he knew that, any moment now, Marie would prop her bike against one of the chestnut trees, sit down beside him with a smile and tell him about her days on the beach at Antalya.

He rode the moped to the Brigittenauer embankment. The cars in the area had no ignition keys in them, he knew. He fetched Marie’s bicycle from the cellar and pedalled back to the Spider within five minutes. He was in pretty good shape. Then, nagged by the feeling that he’d been wasting time, he drove off to work in Hollandstrasse.

He lunched at a pub in Pressgasse noted for its 150-year-old bar. He rubbed out the food and drink prices on the blackboard and wrote Jonas, 24 July on it in chalk.

*

Taking the torch and shotgun with him, Jonas made his way down into the cellar. He turned on the torch and the cellar light in quick succession.

‘Anyone there?’ he called in a deep voice.

The tap gurgled.

Warily, he approached his father’s compartment with the gun held out in front of him and the torch clamped against the barrel. The biting smell of oil and insulating stuff filled his nostrils as before. He might be mistaken, but the smell seemed to have intensified in the last twenty-four hours.

Why was the compartment door open? Had he forgotten to shut it?

He remembered that the cellar light had gone out, and that he’d groped his way to the stairs without a second thought. So the open door was probably all right.

He hung the torch on a hook at head height so that it would light up the whole compartment when the time-switch’s fifteen minutes were up. Before putting the shotgun in a corner he glanced over his shoulder.

‘Hello?’

The tap went ‘ping’, the cellar light flickered. The skeins of dust and cobwebs around the bulb trembled in a draught.

He took a handful of photos out of the first box. Black-and-white snapshots, they looked as if they dated from the 1950s. His parents in the countryside. On walking tours. At home. At work parties. His mother in witch’s get-up, his father as a sheikh. Many were stuck together as if fruit juice had been spilt on them.

A photo from the next box was of Jonas himself. Five or six years old, he was dressed up as a cowboy, complete with charcoal moustache. Standing round him and grinning at the camera were three more youngsters in fancy dress. One of them, who had lost his upper front teeth, was brandishing a sword and laughing. Jonas remembered him. Robert and he had been at nursery school together, so the snapshot must be thirty years old.

A few more photos from the nursery school era. Some with his mother. Fewer with his father. Most of the latter lacked a head or a pair of legs. His mother had been no photographer.

A picture of him on his first day at school. In colour, but faded. He was clutching a satchel not much smaller than himself.

The light in the passage went out.

He straightened up. Half facing the passage, he listened, then shook his head. If he heard any noises from now on, he would ignore them. They were nothing, meant nothing.

A snapshot of himself cuddling a tiger cub and wearing a forced smile. A seaside holiday.

He still remembered the annual holidays at North Italian resorts on the Adriatic. The whole family had had to get up in the middle of the night because the coach left at 3 a.m. He pictured the wall clock’s hands showing half past twelve and vividly recalled the sense of adventure and happiness with which he had packed his little checked rucksack.

They were driven to the bus station by a friend of his father who owned a car. Seaside holidays were a communal venture involving the entire family. That was why, when they got there, he said hello to Uncle Richard and Aunt Olga, Uncle Reinhard and Aunt Lena, whom he recognised by their voices in the darkness. Cigarettes glowed, somebody blew their nose, ring-pull cans of beer snapped open, strangers took bets on when the coach would be ready to leave.

The journey. The voices of the other passengers, some of whom snored. The rustle of paper. It gradually grew lighter and he could make out faces.

A stop at a picnic area in unfamiliar surroundings. Grassy hills glistening with dew. Birds twittering. Glaring light and deep, foreign voices in the toilets. The driver, who had introduced himself as Herr Fuchs, cracked jokes with him. He liked Herr Fuchs. Herr Fuchs was taking them to a place where everything smelt different, where the sun shone differently, where the sky seemed a little denser and the air more treacly.

Those two weeks at the seaside were wonderful. He adored the waves, the seashells, the sand, the hotel meals and glasses of fruit juice. He was allowed to go for a ride in a pedalo. He made friends with youngsters from other countries. Like all the other tourist kids, he was photographed on the corso with a tiger cub in his arms. He was presented with toy pistols and helicopters. It was fun, going on holiday with the whole family. No one was bad-tempered, no one argued, and at night they lingered so long over their Lambrusco that even he didn’t have to go to bed too early. They were glorious, those holidays. Yet his fondest memory was of the few hours prior to departure. The holidays were lovely, but not as lovely as his sense of anticipation, the feeling that anything might happen.

Jonas had passed Herr Fuchs on the way to school a few months later. He said hello, but there was no response. No friendly smile. Herr Fuchs hadn’t recognised him.

*

His stomach tensed as he inserted the videotape.

The Sleeper walked past the camera, got into bed and went to sleep.

Since when had he gone to sleep so easily? In the old days he often used to stare into the darkness for an hour, tossing and turning so violently that he woke Marie. Then she too would get up and drink some warm milk or bathe her feet or count sheep. These days he lay down and passed out as though anaesthetised.

The Sleeper turned over. Jonas poured himself some grapefruit juice, staring absently at the sell-by date on the carton. He tipped some pistachio nuts into a bowl and put it on the sofa table. Then he took the camera’s operating instructions from the lower shelf.

They weren’t complicated. Turn a switch to ‘A’, press a button and key in the required start time. So he wouldn’t have to look it up again, he briefly noted the programming procedure on the back of a stray envelope.

‘What a restless night we’re having,’ he remarked to the screen as the Sleeper turned over for the third time.

Jonas took a swig of juice and sat back. He put his feet up on the table, knocking over the bowl of pistachio nuts. His immediate impulse was to pick them up, but he made a dismissive gesture instead. He rubbed his shoulder, which was sore from carrying the gun around.

The Sleeper sat up. He covered his face with his hands. Then, standing with his back to the camera, he raised his arms. His outstretched forefingers were pointing to his temples.

He remained standing like that.

Until the tape ran out.

Jonas needed a pee, but he felt as if he’d become part of the sofa. He couldn’t even reach for his glass. He rewound the tape with the remote, which felt like a lead weight in his hand. Watched the back of the Sleeper’s head a second time. A third.

He had an urge to throw all the cameras out of the window. All that stopped him was the realisation that this would change nothing. It would merely destroy any chance he had of understanding his predicament.

There was an answer, there had to be. The outside world was a big place. He was just himself. He might never be able to find the answer outside, but he must look for the one within himself. And go on looking.

Gradually, he regained control over his limbs.

He went straight into the bedroom without a detour to the toilet and put in a new tape. He set the alarm. It was nine o’clock. Tonight he had no need to use the timer.

He pressed the record button. He went to the toilet, then into the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth and took a shower. Naked, he walked past the softly humming video camera and wrapped himself in the duvet. He hadn’t dried himself thoroughly. The sheet beneath him became damp.

The camera’s steady hum carried to his ears. He was tired. But his thoughts were racing.