Night Work

15

Jonas sat up with a start and looked round. To his relief, he discovered that everything wasn’t red.

Extricating his feet from the ragged blanket, he sank back on the mattress. He stared at the opposite wall. A pale rectangle marked the spot where he’d removed a watercolour. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. They made another circuit of the room. All the colours were normal.

He couldn’t remember the dream in detail. Only that he’d been striding through a big building in which everything, walls and floors and objects, was a rich, luminous red. The various shades of red differed only slightly, creating the impression that things were dissolving and merging into one another. He had wandered through this building, in which no sound could be heard, encountering nothing but colour, the colour red. It even dictated the shape of things.

*

He threw the mattresses out of the window. The first row of slats he wrenched out of the bedstead offered considerable resistance. The second proved less difficult. He trundled both into the street on the trolley and stowed them in the back of the truck beside the mattresses. Taking the handsaw he’d obtained from the DIY store, he set to work on the bedstead itself. It took him nearly an hour, but then it was done. He stacked the pieces of the bed on the trolley, wheeled them outside and loaded them into the truck.

He made a final tour of inspection. The kitchen cabinets were unfamiliar, they hadn’t been in his parents’ home, so they stayed where they were. Likewise the kitchen stove, fridge and bench. He’d cleared out all the other possessions. Last of all he took the box of photographs and put it in the Spider’s boot.

He perched on the rear end of the truck and looked up at the sky. He had a sense of déjà vu. It was as if the few open windows had only just been opened. The stone figures projecting from the walls seemed to be watching him. One in particular, a knight in chain mail brandishing a sword from behind a shield emblazoned with a fish, was regarding him with scorn. All this he’d experienced before.

Moments later everything was normal again. The windows had long been open. The statues were merely statues. The swordsman stared down with indifference.

Jonas swung round.

He clambered onto the roof of the cab and looked up and down the street. Nothing had changed in the last four weeks. Not the smallest detail. The piece of plastic over the bicycle saddle still fluttered in every breath of wind. The bottle still protruded from the dustbin. The mopeds were still in their usual places.

He swung round again.

He fetched some paper and sticky tape from the cab, together with the marker pen which he’d got from he couldn’t remember where. He stuck a note on the door of the building, where anyone coming back would see it at once.

Come home. Jonas.

After a moment’s thought he attached another sheet of paper bearing the same message to the inside of the door as well.

*

Jonas drove the truck back to Hollandstrasse. Under a blistering sun he cycled back to Rüdigergasse, where he picked up the Spider and drove it to the Brigittenauer embankment. He had a headache. He blamed it on the sawdust he must have inhaled when dismembering the bed, but it might also have been the heat.

It occurred to him, as he removed the photos from the Spider, that he’d forgotten to clear out the cellar. That annoyed him. He hadn’t wanted to set foot in the Rüdigergasse flat again. Now he would have to go back there tomorrow.

He opened the front door and listened. Closed it behind him and locked it. Stood there, straining his ears and peering round. Everything looked as it had when he left the building the day before. When he opened and closed the door, flyers went fluttering across the floor. Lying in the corner was a toy that had belonged to a neighbour’s Alsatian, a well-chewed tennis ball. The lift was on the ground floor, the air laden with the musty smell of damp plaster.

Cautiously, he opened the door of his flat. He searched all the rooms, then locked the door. He put the shotgun down and tossed the photos onto the sofa. He didn’t feel he’d been imagining things the day before. Something had been different from usual. Although appearances were against it and indicated an overactive imagination.

When he shampooed his hair he avoided shutting his eyes until the foam made them smart. He held his face under the shower and wiped the foam away with nervous little movements. His heart beat faster.

For some time now, Jonas had had to contend with an uninvited guest whenever he closed his eyes in the shower. The beast came into his mind on this occasion too. Walking upright on two legs, it was a shaggy creature over two metres tall, a cross between a wolf and a bear, and he knew that its fur concealed something far more intimidating. Every time he shut his eyes he felt overcome with fear of this creature, which came prancing up and threatened him. It moved much faster than a man — faster, too, than any animal he knew. It bounded in, rattled the door of the shower cubicle and tried to pounce on him. But it never got that far because he opened his eyes just in time.

Hearing a rustling sound in the corner, Jonas looked round, yelled and dashed out into the passage. With shampoo in his hair and foam over his naked body, he stood peering back into the bathroom.

‘Oh, no you don’t! Ha, ha!’

He dried himself on a towel from the cupboard in the bedroom. But what about all that shampoo in his hair? He paced irresolutely to and fro between the kitchen sink and the shoe cupboard in the passage without crossing the bathroom threshold.

He was being silly. A rustling sound. That was all. And the wolf-bear creature existed only in his imagination. He could take a shower with his eyes shut, no trouble. No one was threatening him.

The door was locked.

The windows were closed.

No one was hiding in the wardrobe or lurking under the bed.

No one was clinging to the ceiling.

He went back into the cubicle and turned on the tap, held his head under the shower. Shut his eyes.

He guffawed. ‘Hey! Ha, ha! There! You see? I told you! Hallelujah!’

*

It was getting dark outside when he sat down on the living-room floor, wrapped in a bathrobe, and rested his back against the sofa. He smelt of shower gel and was feeling refreshed.

He put the photos on the carpet in front of him.

Ingo Lüscher.

He’d been trying the whole time, at the back of his mind, to recall the full name of the boy above whom the ring had moved in a circle. He had also been pondering the name of the unknown boy. At least he’d remembered Ingo’s surname. They’d teased him, saying he shared the name of a Swiss downhill skier, which had naturally annoyed a patriotic sports fan like Ingo. Jonas hadn’t seen him since primary school. He hadn’t lost sight of Leonhard, on the other hand, until they were put in different classes when they started secondary school.

His thoughts strayed back to his pendulum experiments in the cellar. In principle, he considered such things nonsense, although he had to admit that the results were remarkable. Had he influenced the pendulum without meaning to? His mother was dead and his father had disappeared. He knew this, so he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that his subconscious had guided the chain.

He opened the catch, threaded the ring back onto the chain and dangled it over the first snap he came to. It was one of himself trailing a tennis racket far too big for him across a stretch of grass.

The ring hung motionless.

Started to swing.

Started to move in a circle.

Jonas let out an oath and rubbed his arm. He repeated the experiment. With the same result.

He found a picture of his mother. The ring moved in a circle above her this time too. Above his father, on the other hand, it started to swing after remaining motionless for some time. Above Leonhard it moved in a circle, above Ingo it swung gently to and fro, above the unidentified boy it didn’t move at all. The next time he held the ring above a photo of himself it hung motionless above the box with the crumpled corners.

He was getting inconsistent results.

They were the results he’d expected of such hocus-pocus before he tried it out in the cellar. He ought to be glad. It was a graphic demonstration of how meaningless his experiments at Rüdigergasse had been. But he was more confused than ever.

He hurried into the bedroom and pulled Marie’s shoebox of photos from under the wardrobe. They were recent pictures taken with a single-lens reflex camera, none more than four years old. Most were of Jonas himself. In summer in bathing trunks and flippers, in winter in anorak, bobble hat and boots. He pushed them aside.

Photos showing him with Marie. They were taken from too far away. He put them to one side.

A large close-up of Marie’s face, one he wasn’t familiar with.

He held his breath. He was seeing her for the first time since she’d planted a kiss on his lips on the morning of 3 July and run, stumbling, out of the door because the taxi was waiting. He’d often thought of her since then and pictured her face, but he’d never seen it.

She was smiling at him. He looked into her blue eyes, which were observing him with a mixture of derision and affection. Her expression seemed to say: Don’t worry, it’ll all come right in the end.

That was how she’d been, how he’d known her, how he’d fallen in love with her at a friend’s birthday party. That look was her. So optimistic. Challenging, endearing, smart. And brave. Don’t. Worry. Everything’s. Fine.

Her hair.

Jonas recalled the last time he’d stroked it. He imagined the feel of it, imagined holding her close. Resting his chin on her head, inhaling her fragrance. Feeling her body against his.

Hearing her voice.

He saw her doing her hair in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and looking over her shoulder as she told him the latest gossip from work. Standing at the stove frying her Catalonian courgettes, which were always a bit overseasoned. Swearing at CDs that had been put in the wrong sleeves. Slurping hot milk and honey on the sofa at night and commenting on what was on TV. Lying there, when he tiptoed into the bedroom two hours after her. With the book that had slipped from her hand beside her and one arm draped over her eyes to shield them from the bedside light.

For years he had taken all this for granted. It was simply the way things were: Marie was at his side, where he could hear, smell, feel her. Whenever she went away she returned a few days later and lay beside him once more. It had been the most natural thing in the world.

Not any more, though. Now he merely came across an odd stocking of hers, or picked up a bottle of nail varnish, or discovered one of her blouses hiding at the bottom of the laundry basket.

He went into the kitchen and pictured her standing there, clattering saucepans and drinking white wine.

Don’t worry.

Everything’s fine.

Jonas lay down on the floor beside the sofa with her photo in front of him. He twisted the ring between his fingers, feeling cold and nauseous.

He flung the chain aside.

After a while he stretched out his arm as if the ring were still in his hand. He swung an imaginary pendulum to and fro, then pulled back his arm.

He opened the window and breathed deeply.

He took the photo back into the next room and tossed it into the shoebox without looking at it again. Removing the tape from the camera in the bedroom, he put it in the one connected to the TV and rewound it.

He looked out of the window. Many of the lights that had been on for the first few weeks had gone out. If it went on like this, he would soon be looking out into darkness. And if he didn’t like that, he could always call in at selected flats during the day and turn on all the lights. That would enable him to postpone the night when darkness would take over. It would come in the end, though.

The window of the flat he’d visited after that nightmare was still lit up. On the other hand, many of the street lights that were on now had been off for the first few days. In other streets the lights came on one night and were off the next. Many thoroughfares were unlit every night, one of them being the Brigittenauer embankment.

Jonas shut the window. When he glanced at the blue TV screen, his stomach clenched. He had programmed the video camera with the timer. He might well have to listen to the Sleeper snoring for three whole hours. Equally, he might see something else.

Snoring would be preferable.

He went into the kitchen and drank a glass of port. He felt like another but put the bottle away. He emptied the dishwasher, although there wasn’t much in it. The cardboard boxes containing the video cameras had already been flattened. He gathered them up, dumped them in a neighbouring flat and locked the door again.

Never mind, he thought, as he reached for the remote.

*

The Sleeper lay there, staring at the camera.

Jonas couldn’t see what time it was because the alarm clock had fallen over. He’d forgotten what time he’d set the timer for: 1 a.m., he seemed to recall.

The Sleeper was lying on the edge of the bed, on his side, with his head propped on his hand. Hoodless this time, he was staring intently at the camera. Now and then he blinked, but mechanically and without averting his gaze. His face remained immobile. He didn’t move an arm or a leg, nor did he toss and turn. He simply lay there, looking at the camera.

After ten minutes Jonas felt he couldn’t stand that piercing gaze any longer. He didn’t understand how anyone could lie there like a statue for so long. Without scratching, without sniffing, without clearing his throat or adjusting his position.

After a quarter of an hour he took to shielding his eyes like a cinemagoer when some gruesome scene is being shown. Occasionally he peeped at the screen through his fingers, only to see the same thing.

The Sleeper.

Staring at him.

Jonas couldn’t interpret the look in those eyes. He saw no hint of kindliness or friendliness. Nothing that might have inspired confidence or conveyed intimacy. But he also saw no anger or hatred. Not even dislike. The expression was one of cool, calm condescension and a sort of emptiness that clearly related to himself. It became so intense that he noticed he was displaying signs of mounting hysteria.

He drank some more port, nibbled crisps and peanuts, did a crossword puzzle. The Sleeper continued to look at him. He refilled his glass, fetched himself an apple, did some exercises. The Sleeper was still looking at him. He dashed to the bathroom and threw up. And returned to meet the Sleeper’s unwavering gaze.

The tape ran out after three hours two minutes. The screen went dark for a moment, then switched to the pale blue of the AV channel.

Jonas roamed around the flat. He examined some marks on the fridge. He sniffed door handles and shone his torch behind cupboards, where it wouldn’t have surprised him to find letters. He tapped on the wall the Sleeper had tried to squeeze into.

He put a new tape in the bedroom camera, looking at the bed as he did so. That was where the Sleeper had been lying. And staring at him. Less than forty-eight hours ago.

He lay down, adopting the same position as the Sleeper, and looked at the camera. Although it wasn’t recording, a shiver ran down his spine.

‘Hi there,’ he tried to say, but dizziness overcame him. He had the feeling that the objects around him were growing smaller and more compact. Everything was happening infinitely slowly. He opened his mouth to scream. Heard a noise. Felt as if he could actually touch the speed at which he was pursing his lips. When he fell out of bed and felt the floor beneath him without hearing the noise, when everything seemed normal again, he was filled with a sense of gratitude that immediately gave way to exhaustion.