Night Work

14

Was there really no chance of getting to England?

That was the first thought that occurred to him when he woke up. Would it be possible to get from the Continent to the British Isles?

Images took shape in his mind’s eye. Motorboats. Sailing ships. Yachts. Helicopters. With him on board.

He sat up in bed and looked round hurriedly. The camera was in its place and had clearly been recording. The room had undergone no noticeable changes. He went over to the mirror and pulled up his T-shirt, turning this way and that. He nearly dislocated his shoulder in an attempt to look at his back. He also checked the soles of his feet. He stuck out his chin and his tongue.

Before making breakfast he explored the whole flat in search of the unexpected. Nothing suspicious came to light.

He was feeling fresher than he had the previous day. His nose wasn’t blocked up any more, his throat wasn’t sore and he’d almost stopped coughing. This swift recovery surprised him. His immune system seemed to be functioning well.

During breakfast scenes from last night’s dream came back to him in quick succession. He reached for a notepad and pencil so as to record them, at least in rough outline.

He had entered a cavern suffused with a dark red glow. Visibility was restricted to a few metres. There were people around him, but they didn’t see him and he couldn’t communicate with them. The cavern led past a cube-shaped rock thirty metres high. The passage around the cube was two metres wide.

He climbed a rope ladder to the plateau overhead. The roof of the cavern was some seven metres above him. Fixed to it were the spotlights that gave off the dull red glow.

He saw three bodies lying on the plateau. A young couple on one side, a young man on the other. He recognised all three. He’d gone to school with them. They must have been dead for years, because they looked awful. Although they were skeletons, they had faces. Contorted faces and twisted limbs. Their mouths were open. Their eyes bulging. But they were skeletons.

The man lying by himself was Marc, whom he had sat beside in school for four years. The face wasn’t his, though. Jonas knew the face but couldn’t remember whose it was.

The policemen and paramedics he passed still didn’t speak to him, nor was he able to address a word to them. In some mysterious, non-verbal manner he learnt that the trio had died from rat poison, possibly self-administered. The strychnine had brought about dreadful convulsions and an agonising death.

It was warm on top of this rocky cube imprisoned in a cavern. Warm and still. All that occasionally broke the silence was a sound like wind ruffling a sheet of plastic.

And there were the corpses.

The faces of the dead were suddenly right in front of him. The next moment, he couldn’t see them any more.

All this had some bearing on himself, Jonas realised. It held some hidden significance. Rat poison, cavern, he jotted down. Laura, Robert, Marc dead. Not Marc’s face. Convulsions, decay. Silence. Red glow. A tower. Suspect a wolf walled up in the rock face. Behind it the ultimate horror.

*

At the far end of the block he found a fifth-floor flat he thought would be suitable. The view from the balcony was absolutely ideal; he could even set up two cameras there. He wrote down the address and marked the spot on his street map.

He allocated another two cameras to the Heiligenstädter Brücke. One would film the Brigittenauer embankment while the other, on the other side, would take in the bridge itself and the exit road to the Heiligenstädter embankment. If he set up one camera on the Döblinger Steg, filming the bridge, and another pointing in the opposite direction, he would not only cover the entire area but get some attractive shots, and up to this spot he would have to make use of only one stranger’s flat.

Spittelauer embankment, Rossauer embankment, Franz-Josefs-Kai, Schwedenplatz. Parking the car on the tramlines, he marked the thirteenth camera on his plan. That meant it was time to turn his attention to the other side of the canal.

He spun round at lightning speed.

The leaves of the trees beside the hot-dog stands were rustling in the breeze.

The square, a motionless expanse. The windows of the chemist’s, unlit. The ice-cream parlour. The steps leading down to the underground station. Rotenturmstrasse.

He turned on the spot. Not a movement anywhere. He could have sworn he’d heard a sound he couldn’t identify. A sound of human origin.

He pretended to scribble something on his notepad. Head down, eyes swivelling in both directions until they ached, he watched and waited to see if the sound was repeated. Again he spun round.

Nothing.

He drove across the Danube Canal. Camera No. 14 he reserved for the Schwedenbrücke and Obere Donaustrasse intersection. At the corner of Untere Augartenstrasse he explored a building in search of another elevated camera position. He found two unlocked flats and chose the upper one. It was almost bare of furniture, and the sound of his footsteps on the old parquet floors echoed around the rooms.

His route took him from Obere Donaustrasse to Gaussplatz and from there into Klosterneuburger Strasse, which came out on the Brigittenauer embankment. The last camera but one would film the intersection of Klosterneuburger Strasse and Adalbert-Stifter-Strasse from the north. The last was also camera No. 1. He would set it up on the Brigittenauer embankment, fifty metres past his front door in the direction of Heiligenstädter Brücke.

Jonas shut his notepad. He was hungry. He took a few steps towards the entrance. Turned once more.

Something was making him feel uneasy.

He got into the car and locked the doors.

*

While driving along he noticed that a door was open. He backed up. It was the entrance to the Gasthaus Haas in Margaretenstrasse.

‘Come outside!’

He waited for a minute. Meanwhile, he memorised the layout of the street.

He went inside and searched the premises cautiously. He remembered having eaten there once with Marie. Years ago. The restaurant was jam-packed and the food nothing special. Their meal had been spoilt by the people at the next table. A bunch of drunken racegoers with lots of gold around their necks and wrists, they had loudly debated the chances of various horses and tried to outdo each other in name-dropping.

A friend who was interested in canine science had once explained to Jonas why so many small dogs will attack far more powerful members of the same species despite the risks involved. It was all down to breeding. Having once belonged to a far bigger breed, they hadn’t yet got it into their heads that they no longer measured ninety centimetres from shoulder to paw. In a sense, small dogs believed themselves to be the same size as their opponents and flew at their throats regardless.

Jonas hadn’t gathered whether this theory was based on scientific research or just a leg-pull on his friend’s part, but one thing he had grasped: Austrians were exactly like those dogs.

*

As he walked through the half-cleared flat he had an urge to start work again. He was feeling better, so there was no reason why not.

He fetched the trolley from the truck and began with some lighter pieces. A linen chest, a standard lamp, the last remaining bookcase. He made rapid progress. Although sweating, he wasn’t breathing much faster than usual. Clothes horse, TV, sofa table, bedside table all disappeared into the truck one by one. All that remained in the end were the bed and the wardrobe.

Jonas eyed the wardrobe, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. It held a lot of associations for him. He knew how the left-hand door creaked when it was opened, a whining sound that went through the whole scale, from high to low. He knew how it smelt inside. Of leather and clean linen. Of his parents, his father. For years he had lain on the sofa beside this wardrobe when ill because his mother didn’t want to go into the bedroom to bring him tea and rusks. Traces of that period must surely be visible.

There was an energy-saving bulb in the ceiling light. It was too dim to reveal much. Jonas fetched the torch and shone it on the side of the wardrobe. He could clearly make out some numbers and letters scratched on the pale wood with the tip of a penknife.

8.4.1977. Tummy-ache. Mummy’s new hat. Yellow. 22.11.1978. 23.11.1978. 4.3.1979. Flu. Tea. Given a model of Fittipaldi’s car. 12.6.1979. 13.6.1979. 15.6.1979. 21.2.1980. Ski jumping.

There were a dozen more dates, some with comments, many unexplained. He was surprised his father hadn’t got rid of these inscriptions. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed them or hadn’t wanted the expense of restoration. His father had never liked spending money.

Jonas tried to think himself into the skin of the boy he’d been then.

He was lying there. Feeling bored. He wasn’t allowed to read because reading strained your eyes. He wasn’t allowed to watch TV because the set emitted rays to which a sick child should not be exposed. He was lying there with his Lego set and his marbles and his pocket knife and other things to be concealed from his mother’s gaze. He had to occupy himself, so he often played rafts, a game that came to his rescue even on rainy afternoons when he was well. The raft was an upturned table. Or, if he was lying beside the wardrobe with a temperature, the sofa itself.

He was adrift on the high seas. It was warm and sunny. He was bound for exciting places where he would have adventures and make friends with great, heroic figures. But he needed provisions for the voyage. So he found excuses for creeping around the flat, pinched chewing gum, caramels and biscuits from the sweets drawer, begged slices of bread, filched bottles of lemonade from under his mother’s nose. Laden with this haul, he returned to the raft and put to sea again.

It was still as warm and sunny, but the raft was tossing around on the waves. He had to clutch his possessions to him to prevent them from becoming soaked with spray.

America was a long way off, however, and his stores were still insufficient, so he landed once more. He needed books and comics, plus some paper and a pencil to write and draw with. He needed more clothes. He needed various useful things to be found in his father’s drawers. A compass. A pair of binoculars. A pack of cards with which to win money from villainous opponents. A knife with which to defend himself. He must also take a gift for Sandokan, the Tiger of Malaysia, to seal their friendship. He could barter his mother’s string of pearls with the natives.

He needed all kinds of things, and he wasn’t satisfied with his equipment until there was barely room for himself on the sofa and he was hemmed in on all sides by blankets and ladles and clothes pegs. It thrilled him through and through to think that he’d accumulated all he needed in order to survive. He needed no outside help. He had everything.

Then his mother appeared to see how he was getting on. She was astonished that he’d managed to get together so many forbidden items in such a short time. Some of them, after much argument, he was allowed to keep. Then the raft put to sea again, lightened of one or two treasures by Blackbeard.

Jonas gave the wardrobe a shake. It scarcely moved. Manhandling it outside would be quite a business. He would have to turn the thing over because it stood on feet and couldn’t be loaded onto the trolley in an upright position.

8.04.1977. Tummy-ache.

On 8 April nearly thirty years ago he’d lain beside this wardrobe suffering from a stomach-ache. He had no recollection of that day or his discomfort. But these clumsy letters and numerals were his handiwork. He’d been feeling ill even at the moment when he was scratching that T, that U, that M. He, Jonas. That had been him. And he’d had no inkling of what was to come. No inkling of the exams he would sit later on, of his first girlfriend, of his moped, of leaving school and starting to earn a living. Or of Marie. He had changed, grown up, become an entirely different person. But this writing was still here. When he looked at these marks he was looking at frozen time.

On 4 March 1979 he’d had flu and been made to drink lots of tea, which he disliked in those days. Tito was still alive in Yugoslavia, Carter was president of the United States, Brezhnev ruled Russia, and he was lying beside this wardrobe with flu, not knowing what it signified that Carter was in office or that Tito would soon be dead. He had been preoccupied with his new model car, a black one with the number 1 on the side, and Brezhnev didn’t exist for him.

When he’d carved these letters the doomed crew of Challenger were still alive, the Pope was new in his job and had no idea that Ali Agca would shoot him, and the Falklands War hadn’t started. When he’d written this he hadn’t known what was to come. Nor had anyone else.

*

The rattle of the trolley wheels on the stone floor echoed round the building. He paused to listen. He recalled the feeling he’d had on the Brigittenauer embankment. The feeling that something was wrong. And the sensation of being watched outside the Gasthaus Haas. Leaving the trolley and wardrobe where they were, he went out into the street.

‘Hello?’

He sounded the truck’s horn in short, sharp bursts. Peered in all directions. Looked up at the windows.

‘Come outside! At once!’

He waited for a few minutes. Pretended to be lost in thought, sauntered around with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly to himself. Every now and then he turned and stood stock-still, looking and listening.

Then he went back to work. He trundled the trolley outside, and soon afterwards the wardrobe was on board the truck. That only left the bed, but he’d done enough for today.

*

Something about the narrow cellar passage puzzled him. He stopped and looked around. Nothing caught his eye. He gave himself time to collect his thoughts, but he couldn’t think what it was.

He went to his father’s compartment, cleared his throat in a deep voice and wrenched the door open so roughly it crashed back against the wall. He gave a harsh laugh, looked over his shoulder and shook his fist.

A snapshot of himself with Frau Bender. He was sitting on her lap with one arm around her waist, laughing. She was smoking a cigarette. On the table in front of her, a glass of wine with the bottle and a vase of wilting flowers beside it.

He couldn’t remember her drinking. A child wouldn’t have noticed such a thing, presumably, but it didn’t fit in with the image he still had of her. She lived on in his memory as a friendly, well-groomed old lady. Far from looking friendly, the woman in the photograph was glaring at the camera. Frau Bender didn’t look very well-groomed, either — quite unlike his idea of a lady. She looked like a slovenly old hag. All the same, he’d been fond of her then and he still was.

Hello, old girl, he thought. So remote.

While studying this dusty snapshot of his parents’ former neighbour he recalled her favourite pastime: dangling a weight over photographs, preferably those dating from the war, to see if the people in them were still alive. Meanwhile, she would reminisce to Jonas about the people in question.

He shut his eyes and pressed his forefinger against the bridge of his nose, trying to remember. If the weight swung to and fro it meant alive, if it moved in a circle, dead. Or was it the other way round? No, that was right.

Jonas slipped off the ring Marie had given him and opened the catch of the silver chain he wore around his neck. He threaded the ring onto it and tried to close the catch again. His trembling fingers made this difficult, but he finally succeeded.

Having improvised a table out of a stack of boxes, he turned on the torch and hung it on a hook. Then he placed the photograph on the topmost box and dangled the chain and ring over his face in the picture. His arm was too unsteady, so he had to support it.

The ring hung motionless.

It started to swing slightly.

The swinging increased.

The ring swung to and fro in a straight line.

Jonas looked around. He went out into the passage. In the light of his torch, a thick skein of dust cast a restless shadow on the wall. The tap was dripping incessantly. The air smelt strongly of the insulating material, but the smell of oil had disappeared altogether.

‘Come on out now,’ he called gently.

He waited a moment before going back into the compartment. He stretched out his hand again, this time over Frau Bender’s face. He rested his elbow on the carton and supported his forearm with his free hand.

The ring hung motionless over the photo. Then it started to shake, to swing. The swinging increased. It moved in a circle. A definite circle.

How often Frau Bender had done the same thing. How often she had sat over photos of people and pronounced them dead. And now he was doing it over a picture of her, and she was beside him no longer. She’d been dead for fifteen years or more.

He reached into a box and brought out a handful of snaps. Himself with a school satchel. With a scooter. In a field with a badminton racket. With some playmates.

He studied the last picture. Four boys, one of them himself, playing in the backyard now filled with the Kästner family’s junk. Some sticks shoved in the ground, a little coloured ball, in the background a plastic tub of water with objects floating in it.

Jonas placed the photo on his makeshift table. He held out his arm and dangled the ring over his face. It started to swing evenly, back and forth. He held the ring over one of the boys, Leonhard.

He stared at the chain.

The light in the passage went out, leaving the box dimly illuminated by his torch. He shut his eyes and forced himself to remain calm.

The ring didn’t stir.

He withdrew his hand and shook his arm to relax it. Removing the torch from the hook, he picked up his gun and stomped out into the passage.

‘Hey!’ he called. ‘Hey, hey, hey!’

He switched on the passage light and turned on the spot. After standing there for several seconds, he went back into the compartment.

He repeated the experiment. Over himself the ring swung to and fro. Over Leonhard, nothing.

He dangled the ring over the third boy and waited, trying to remember his name.

The ring didn’t move.

What nonsense it all is, he thought.

He fiddled with the catch, intending to remove the ring from the chain. Then, on impulse, he put out his arm again and held the ring over the picture of the fourth boy, Ingo.

It quivered and started to swing.

To move in a circle.

He repeated all four experiments. Over himself the ring swung to and fro, over Ingo it moved in a circle, over Leon-hard and the nameless boy it remained motionless.

He pushed the photograph aside and reached for the pile he’d left on the edge of his table of boxes.

Himself in the backyard in bathing trunks. Himself with a trophy he certainly hadn’t won. Himself with two ski poles. Himself in front of an enormous Coca-Cola hoarding. Himself with his mother outside his primary school.

He laid the photo down, stretched out his arm and dangled the ring over his own picture.

The ring briefly moved in a circle, probably because he hadn’t kept his arm steady enough, then went back into the usual pendulum motion.

He held it over his mother’s face.

It hung motionless, then moved in a circle.

Photos of himself with his mother, of himself with a football, of himself with a tomahawk and feathered headdress. Of his mother on her own, of his mother in hiking gear. Of his grandmother, who had died in 1982. Of two men he didn’t remember.

He held the ring over them. It moved in a circle both times, just as it had over his grandmother’s picture.

Photos of Kanzelstein. Himself with his mother in the garden, picking sorrel. Himself in a field with bow and arrow. Himself at the wheel of Uncle Reinhard’s VW Beetle. Himself at the ping-pong table, which came up to his chest.

Finally, a photo of himself with a man whose head had been cropped by the upper margin of the picture. He laid it down on the table.

Above his own face the ring swung to and fro.

Above the picture of the man beside him it remained motionless.

That might have been because the head wasn’t shown. Hurriedly, Jonas looked through the pile until he found a photo that showed his father’s face as well. He repeated the experiment.

The ring didn’t move.

*

Hungry and exhausted, Jonas flopped down on the mattress and draped the ragged blanket he’d fetched from the truck over his feet. He hadn’t noticed the time, and it was already dark. He had avoided being outside after dark ever since his trip to the Mondsee. In view of the feeling of uneasiness that had come over him on the Brigittenauer embankment, he had no desire to go home at this hour.

He cleared his throat. The sound echoed around the empty flat.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said aloud, and turned on his side.

Lying within reach on the floor, which was littered with scraps of paper and crumpled balls of sticky tape, was a box of photographs he’d brought up from the cellar. He took out a batch of them. They hadn’t been sorted. Photos from different decades were mixed up together. Ten snaps displayed five different locations, two black-and-white photos followed three in colour, and the next pictures dated from the late 1950s. In one he was tugging at the bars of his playpen, in the next he was being confirmed.

He studied a photograph of himself taken a week after his birth, according to the inscription on the back. He was lying, wrapped in a blanket, on his parents’ bed. The bed he was lying on at that very moment. Only his head and hands were visible.

That bald creature was him.

That was his nose.

Those were his ears.

That pinched little face was his.

He peered at the tiny hands. He held his right hand in front of his face and looked at the right hand in the picture.

It was the same hand.

The hand he could see in the photo would learn to write, first with a pencil, then with a fountain pen. Nearly thirty years ago the hand in front of his face had learnt to write, first with a pencil, then with a fountain pen. The hand in the photo would stroke the cats that wandered over from their next-door neighbour in Kanzelstein, take hold of the old wood-carver’s ornamental walking stick, play cards. The hand in front of his face had stroked the cats in Kanzelstein, taken hold of that walking stick and played cards. The little hand in the photo would some day design interiors with a ruler and compasses, type on a computer keyboard, light someone’s cigarette. The hand in front of his face had signed contracts, moved chessmen, sliced onions with a kitchen knife.

The hand in the photo would grow, grow, grow.

The hand in front of his face had grown.

He kicked off the blanket and went to the window. The street lights weren’t on. He had to press his forehead and nose against the pane to make out the shapes outside.

The Spider was parked in the street with the truck in front of it. The tailboard was down. It hadn’t looked like rain.

He tiptoed back to the bed. The carpet felt rough beneath his feet.