Night Work

13

Jonas looked first at the camera. It was still standing there.

He blinked and rubbed his eyes. Tried to collect his thoughts. He’d fallen into bed after his long trip without putting in a tape, but he wasn’t sorry.

His throat was sore. It hurt him to swallow.

He shut his eyes and turned over.

*

He made his way downstairs and went to the supermarket. There he stowed some cartons of fruit juice and long-life milk in a shopping bag, together with a marble cake vacuum-sealed in transparent plastic, ‘Use by end October’. His stomach muscles clenched when he read the date. End October. Would he still be roaming this deserted city at the end of October? What would happen in the meantime? What after that?

What in December?

In January?

Jonas got into the Spider and drove to the city centre. He rattled the doors of various cafés. They were all locked. He didn’t find one open until he came to Himmelpfortgasse.

While the espresso machine was hissing away behind him, he cut some slices of marble cake and poured himself a glass of orange juice.

End October.

January. February.

March. April. May. September.

He stared at the untouched cake, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to get any of it down.

He made himself a second cup of coffee. There was a newspaper on the counter. He picked it up and, for the hundredth time, skimmed the news reports for 3 July. He only sipped his espresso. Once he thought he heard a sound coming from the basement, where the toilets were. He took a few steps towards the stairs and listened. Nothing more to be heard.

In a chemist’s not far from the café he looked for some aspirin and vitamin tablets. He took twice the recommended number of drops from a bottle of echinacea. Sucking a throat pastille, he strolled back to the car and drove slowly to Stephansplatz, where he perched on the Spider’s roof.

Scattered clouds were drifting across the sky. A wind was blowing. A foretaste of autumn? No, impossible, not in July. Just a temporary depression. Autumn wasn’t till October. End October.

And then would come November. December. January. Thirty days plus thirty-one and another thirty-one. Ninety-two days between the beginning of November and the end of January, and he would have to live through twenty-four hours in each. And through the days and hours before and after them. All by himself.

He rubbed his bare arms, looking at the Haas Haus. He’d never been inside. He’d meant to take Marie to eat at Do & Co, but they’d never got round to it.

He gazed across the deserted square, eyeing the statues that projected from the walls wherever he looked. Fantasy figures, musicians, dwarfs, gargoyles. And, on St Stephen’s Cathedral, saints. They all stared mutely over his head.

He had the impression that the statues were multiplying. As if there had been fewer of them the day he made the video. Buildings all over the city seemed to be sprouting more and more of them.

*

The photographic shops in the city centre, which weren’t as numerous as he’d assumed, yielded eight video cameras of his preferred model. He also loaded five tripods into the car. Then he drove to Mariahilfer Strasse by way of the Burgring and stopped outside each photographic shop. After that he tried the Neubaugürtel.

He was feeling limp. More than once he had doubts about the point of this expedition or was tempted at least to postpone it until a better day. His nose was running, his throat sore, his head muzzy. But he wasn’t ill enough to go to bed. Besides, absurd though it was, he felt he oughtn’t to waste any time. Although he had all the time in the world and didn’t really have to do a thing, he was feeling restless. And since he’d left the Mondsee, he was feeling more restless than ever.

By afternoon the car was so full all he could see in the rear-view mirror were boxes. There were twenty video cameras and twenty-six tripods. Added to the ones at home, that made just short of thirty cameras ready for use. They ought to be sufficient.

*

Jonas gave the flat a quick once-over to see if all was well. Without putting on his industrial gloves, he took the torch and shotgun and went down to the cellar. He noticed no changes there either.

He felt in a box at random. Instead of the photographs he’d expected, his fingers dug into something soft and fluffy. He recoiled with a start, then shone the torch inside the box. It was a soft toy he’d never seen before. A dirty green teddy bear with its left eye missing and its right ear nibbled away. A string protruded from its backside. Jonas pulled it. A tune started playing.

He shuddered, transfixed by the sound, and listened to it in frozen silence. Ding, dang, dong. A soft, tinkly little tune. Then it ended, and his fingers automatically gave the string another tug.

Out of the blue, he was hit by the realisation that this had been his musical box. This was the melody that had lulled him to sleep as a baby. Now he remembered the song. His infant self had heard it every night. He didn’t know it any more, but part of the melody had stayed with him longer than most things:

La-le-lu, only the man in the moon’s watching you.

Suddenly the fever hit him.

It happened instantaneously. His head swam. He clutched his brow, noticing as he did so that billows of heat were surging through him. His legs threatened to give way at any moment. This was serious. He would never make it back home. Even getting out of the cellar would be something.

With a movement of almost infinite slowness, he stuffed the musical teddy bear under his T-shirt. He was vaguely aware of the danger this movement put him in. He concentrated on keeping the movement going, continuing it, ignoring the sound that was swelling to a roar in the distance.

He tucked the T-shirt into his waistband and turned round. Leaning on the shotgun, with the torch dangling from his wrist by its cord, he tottered step by step to the exit. The billows of heat gained strength. He was breathing through his mouth. After a couple of steps he paused to catch his breath.

He reached the stairway somehow, but his knees gave way on the second step. He crouched down, supporting himself on his hands. Ignoring the dirt and cobwebs, he rested his head against the wall. It felt pleasantly cool.

The light on the stairs went out. Now all that illuminated the stairwell were a few faint rays of sunlight coming through a small window on the half landing. It was a moment or two before he managed to turn on the torch. A bright dot of light flitted across the stone floor.

Feeling marginally better, he forced himself to stand up. Everything went round and round. His heart was thudding.

He hauled himself up on the handrail step by step, trying to reassure the panic-stricken voice inside him. He wasn’t going to die. There would be no point in it. It wouldn’t be a heart attack on the stairs that carried him off.

He tried hard to ignore his brief, but recurrent, missing heartbeats as he tottered upstairs to the flat. He’d stopped thinking about anything at all. He put one foot in front of the other, breathing in, breathing out, pausing to rest, moving on.

Water, he thought, when he’d locked the front door behind him. He needed a drink.

He found an aspirin in his trouser pocket. The packet was dirty and crumpled. It hadn’t come from the chemist’s in Himmelpfortgasse, so he’d probably been carrying it around for quite a while. His other medication was in the car. It might as well have been on another continent.

He dissolved the aspirin in some water and drank it.

He found two empty lemonade bottles. He rinsed them out, filled them with water and set off on the long trek to the bedroom, taking them with him. The shotgun he left in the hallway. It was too heavy.

He wasn’t greeted by the ticking of the wall clock, which was already packed. Pale patches of wallpaper marked the places where shelves had been. The bed was stripped. The sheets had been used to protect the crockery that lay in boxes in the truck outside. He would have to manage without any bedclothes. It was summer, after all.

He lay down on the bare mattress. Almost simultaneously, he started shivering again. He’d made a mistake, he realised. Instead of toiling upstairs to the flat, he should have got into the car and turned on the heater.

He shivered himself to sleep. When he surfaced again, not knowing if he’d slept for ten minutes or three hours, his teeth were chattering violently. His arm twitched convulsively and thumped the wall. The bedstead contained a second mattress. He dragged it out and put it over himself.

Jonas submerged once more. His mind drew involuntary patterns and lines. Geometrical figures loomed up before him. Rectangles. Hexagons. Dodecagons. It was his laborious task to draw straight lines inside them. Not with a pencil, but with a look that left an instantaneous track behind it. He also had to discover the central point in a field of tension that held each geometrical figure together on the one hand, and, on the other, was rendered intangible by magnetism. Magnetism appeared to be the strongest power on earth. Confronted by an endless succession of new shapes, he had to draw lines and locate points inside them all. As if that were not enough, the two activities steadily merged without his being able to grasp how.

*

The bedside light was on. It was dark outside. Jonas took a drink of water. It hurt when he swallowed. He had to force himself. He drank half the bottle. Sank back on the mattress.

The shivering had let up. He felt his forehead. He was running a very high temperature. He turned over on his stomach. The mattress smelt of his father.

He no longer had to deal with hexagons and dodecagons, but with shapes that defied his comprehension. He knew he was dreaming but couldn’t find a way out. He was still being forced to draw lines and look for central magnetic points. Shape after shape appeared to him. He drew line after line, located point after point. He awoke for just long enough to turn over. He saw the shapes boring into him but couldn’t fend them off. They were there. They were everywhere. When one appeared, the next was already lying in wait.

*

Jonas finished off the bottle of water around midnight. He felt sure he’d heard noises in the living room a short while before. Huge ball-bearings rolling across the floor. A door closing. A table being shifted. He had a sudden vision of Frau Bender. It occurred to him that she’d never been inside this flat. He would have liked to get up and look.

*

He was cold. The air smelt foul and he was terribly cold. He heard a voice. Opened one eye. It was almost totally dark. Coming from a tiny window was a ray of light just bright enough to reveal that dawn was breaking. His eye closed again.

The smell was familiar.

He massaged his arms. Everything hurt. He had the feeling he was lying on stones. Again he heard a voice, even heard footsteps quite close at hand. He opened his eyes, which gradually grew accustomed to the gloom. He saw a wooden fence. Protruding from between the uprights was a walking stick decorated with carvings.

He really was lying on stones. Beaten earth and stones.

From close at hand came the sound of voices and the chink of glasses. A door slammed, the sounds ceased. Soon afterwards the door creaked open again. A woman’s voice said something. The door closed, silence fell.

He stood up and made for the source of the sounds.

He got there at exactly the right moment. Standing in the middle of a dark passage, he heard the door creak open again just beside him. A man called out something that sounded like a toast. Cheerful laughter rang out in the background. There must have been dozens of people there. A shrill female voice joined the man’s in a lively conversation. Then the glasses chinked once more.

Although he was standing nearby, he couldn’t see a thing. Neither the door, nor the woman, nor the man.

The door closed. He positioned himself at precisely the right spot: on the threshold. Nothing.

The door creaked open. He felt a faint draught on his face, heard a babble of voices. Somebody tapped a glass and cleared his throat. Silence fell. The door closed again.

‘Hello?’

*

When he awoke around noon he couldn’t breathe through his nose. His throat was raw and his thirst seemed unquenchable. But the fever, he sensed at once, had left him.

He pushed the mattress off him, sat up and drained the second bottle of water without putting it down. In the kitchen he found some rusks. Although he wasn’t in pain, he didn’t want to subject his organism to unnecessary strain. He blew his nose.

The fresh air made him feel dizzy when he emerged into the street. He leant against the wall, holding his head. The sun was shining and a gentle breeze was blowing. The depression had moved on.

He got into the passenger seat, lowered the sun visor and examined his face in the vanity mirror. His cheeks were pale and blotchy. He put out his tongue. It was thickly furred.

He cupped an assortment of pills in his hand and tossed them into his mouth, put his head back and dripped some echinacea straight onto his tongue. Leaning back against the headrest, he stared at the dashboard. His legs were very weak, he could feel, but he no longer had a temperature.

He debated how to spend the day. He didn’t want to lounge around idly. He couldn’t watch films because they upset him, couldn’t read because any form of reading matter seemed superfluous and unimportant. If he opted for a day’s bedrest, he’d do nothing but stare at the ceiling.

On his way back to the flat he suddenly, without thinking, made for the stairs that led down to the cellar. He raised the shotgun.

‘Anyone there?’

He pushed the door open with the gun barrel, turned on the light and paused.

The tap was still dripping.

He went inside. A cool draught stroked his cheeks. The smell of insulating stuff was still as pervasive. He buried his nose in his shirtsleeve.

Halfway along the passage he stopped short.

‘Hello? Anyone there?’

He lowered the gun. His musical box came to mind.

*

Although he carried no more than five boxed video cameras at any one time, shuffling along like an old man, he broke out in a sweat on the way from the car to the lift. He pressed the button with his free little finger. When the door slid open, he added the boxes to the others already inside. The lift was too small to take them all at the same time, so he had to make two journeys.

He sprawled on the sofa, breathing hoarsely through his mouth. As soon as he’d recovered he squeezed some menthol gel up his nose, straight from the tube. It stung, but he could breathe freely soon afterwards.

He unpacked. Twenty cameras and twenty-six tripods had to be removed from their bubble wrap, twenty battery packs inserted in the charger and connected to the mains. He was also conscientious enough to recharge the old batteries he’d obtained from the shopping centre, including those in the cameras in front of the bed and next to the TV.

Should he watch the tape of the night before his departure for the Mondsee? He still had no idea why he’d woken up in the living room that morning. Perhaps the tape would enlighten him. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure it was something he was looking forward to. He removed the tape from the bedroom camera and put it on one side.

He spread some liver pâté on a slice of pumpernickel. He didn’t like it, but he could sense how short of energy he was. He made himself another slice and followed it up with an apple and a few drops of echinacea washed down with some vitamin-enriched fruit juice.

He looked at the musical box, which he’d put beside the phone. He could remember the tune it played, but not the one-eyed, one-eared bear itself.

He pulled the string and the tune played. It was as if he were touching something that no longer existed. As if he were seeing some long-extinguished heavenly body whose light was reaching him only now.

*

He spent several hours playing a computer game, breaking off just long enough to hang up the washing. By evening he was feeling tired but better than he had that morning. He blew his nose, gargled with camomile tea and took an aspirin.

The batteries were fully charged. He collected them together and put them on the sofa with the rest of his equipment. He pushed a battery into its holder and put a tape in the deck, then screwed the camera to a tripod. When he’d got two cameras ready, he took them into the empty flat next door. He unfolded the tripods and set them up side by side.

When he was finished he surveyed the semicircle of cameras confronting him in the spacious living room. Most of their lenses were trained on him. There were so many of them it seemed unreal. He felt they were crowding around him like extraterrestrial dwarfs at feeding time.

*

The Sleeper was tossing and turning as usual. An occasional snore could be heard.

Jonas wondered how to stay awake. It was almost midnight. He put the thermometer under his armpit.

How should he spend tomorrow? He was still too weak to load the furniture into the truck. He would look for suitable flats in which to set up the cameras, restricting himself to buildings with lifts.

The Sleeper threw off the duvet.

Jonas leant forwards. Without taking his eyes off the screen, he felt for his teacup. The thermometer beeped but he took no notice. He couldn’t understand what he was seeing.

The Sleeper was wearing a hood.

Jonas hadn’t looked as closely before. Now he noticed that the Sleeper’s head was enveloped in a black hood pierced with little holes for the eyes, nose and mouth.

The Sleeper was sitting upright on the edge of the bed. Motionless, supporting himself on his hands. He seemed to be staring at the camera. The lighting wasn’t strong enough to reveal the eyes in the midst of the black material.

He just sat there. Unmoving.

In some sinister, unspoken manner, his rigid pose conveyed scorn and defiance. It was a silent challenge.

Jonas couldn’t look at that black mask for long. He felt he was staring into a void. Unable to endure its emptiness, he averted his gaze.

Then he looked back at that black head, that hole of a face.

He went into the bathroom and cleaned his teeth. Paced up and down, humming to himself. Returned to the TV.

Black head, motionless body.

The Sleeper was sitting there like a dead man.

Little by little, as if in slow motion, he raised his right arm. Extended his forefinger. Pointed at the camera.

Froze.