Night Work

19

Although it was only first light, Jonas padded barefoot across the creaking floorboards to his clothes, which were draped over a chair. He peered out of the window. Some rubbish skips were standing on the other side of the street, just visible in outline. The street looked as it did on a normal Sunday morning, when the last of the night owls had come home and everyone was asleep. He had always liked this time of day. Everything became easier when the darkness receded. It was appropriate that murderers should be strapped into the electric chair or sent to the gas chamber a minute after midnight, Jonas thought, because there was no more hopeless time than the middle of the night.

He had some breakfast and packed the camera. When the sun came up he said: ‘Goodbye, have a nice time!’

He not only locked the front door behind him, he sealed it with sticky tape. No one would be able to get in without his knowing.

*

While driving along the motorway he pondered on the latest videotape.

How had the Sleeper pulled the knife out of the wall with no effort when he himself had failed to do so several times? True, the Sleeper wasn’t in bed when the tape started. He could have messed around with the wall and the blade beforehand. But how? The wall was undamaged.

Where the motorway had three lanes, Jonas drove in the middle. Where there were two he kept to the right. He sounded the horn from time to time. Its powerful blare gave him a feeling of security. He’d switched on the driver’s transceiver, which was emitting a soft hiss. So was the radio.

In Linz he looked for the pub where he’d eaten during the thunderstorm. He spent some time cruising around the district where he thought it was, but he couldn’t even find the chemist’s he’d raided for cold cures. He gave up and drove back to the main road. Finding the car showroom was all that mattered.

The Toyota was standing outside, just as he’d left it. Although it didn’t appear to have rained for quite a while, the car was quite clean. The air was evidently less dirty than it used to be.

‘Hello, you,’ he said, and drummed on the roof.

He’d never felt sentimental about the Toyota before. But now it was his car, the one he’d owned in the old days. The Spider would never be that for the same reason that Jonas never got himself any new clothes. No new shirts or shoes, because he couldn’t have regarded them as his property. What had belonged to him before 4 July belonged to him now. He would never get any richer.

He backed the 4WD and the Spider off the truck. The Toyota started first time. He drove it aboard. Although the Spider had been smaller, there was still room for the 4WD.

*

He left the motorway at Laakirchen. The road to Attnang-Puchheim was well signposted, but the house he’d slept in was considerably harder to find. Not having expected to return, he hadn’t bothered to memorise the route. Eventually he recalled that the house with the few windows had been near the station. That narrowed it down. Five minutes later he spotted the DS standing beside the kerb.

Jonas trod on the kick-starter and the engine fired. He let the moped putter away for a while. Then he pushed it up the ramp and into the truck and secured it to the side. He counted backwards. It was almost incredible but true: he’d been here only a week ago. It felt like months.

Whether or not he’d turned off all the lights before leaving the house, he had to turn them on again now. Going into the bedroom with the bundle of clothes under his arm, he caught sight of his approaching figure in the wardrobe mirror and dropped his gaze. He put the shirt and trousers back where they belonged.

‘Thanks for these.’

He left the room without looking back and headed, stiff-backed, for the front door. He wanted to walk faster, but something held him back. He paid no attention to the curious pictures in the hallway and replaced the car key on its hook.

Just then it struck him that there was

one

more

picture

than last time.

He shut the front door behind him and made his way along the narrow path to the street with marionette-like movements. Nothing in the world could have persuaded him to set foot in that house again

He wasn’t mistaken. One of those pictures hadn’t been there a week ago. Which one, he didn’t know, but there had been seven. Now there were eight.

No, he must have miscounted. That was the only explanation. He’d been tired and agitated and soaked to the skin. His memory was playing tricks.

*

On the way to Salzburg he felt hungry. He opened the bag of sweets lying on the bunk behind him and drank some lemonade. The weather was deteriorating. Just before the Mondsee exit he drove into a violent rainstorm. Memories of his last visit were not pleasant and he didn’t want to stop, but at the last moment he braked and swerved off down the exit road. The truck’s big wiper blades were whipping back and forth across the windscreen, the cab was warm and he had plenty to eat and drink. He felt almost snug. His shotgun was lying beside him. Nothing bad could happen.

There was a crash as he drove through the lido gate. The signboard above the entrance went flying, but he didn’t feel the slightest jolt.

The car park roads were narrow and separated by strips of grass enclosed by low walls. Ignoring the rows of saplings he was mowing down, he made straight for the stretch of grass beside the lake. With malicious glee he rammed the Hungarian car, which was still there. He put his foot right down. A metal barrier hurtled through the air. He giggled. The grass was slippery. He braked so as not to plunge the truck into the lake.

Keeping well clear of the water’s edge, he reconnoitred the area without getting out, without even stopping. Rain was drumming on the roof of the cab with such violence that he had no need of the inner voice warning him not to get out.

No trace of his tent. Jonas turned and drove as far as the changing cubicles, then back to the car park, which was strewn with branches and debris. He lowered the driver’s window and put his arm out into the rain. Levelling his forefinger at an invisible passer-by, he yelled some garbled sentences, the content of which he himself didn’t understand.

*

Finding the Salzburg Marriott presented no problem, in part because it had stopped raining. When he got out in front of the hotel he was both alarmed and exultant.

He couldn’t hear any music.

The CD of the Mozart symphonies, the one that had been meant to attract people to the scene, had evidently been turned off. Or had turned itself off. Or there’d been a short circuit.

Had someone been here? Was someone here?

He would know soon.

Soon.

Shotgun at the ready, he entered the lobby. The notes on the door and the reception desk had both disappeared, but a video camera had been set up in the middle of the passage, its lens trained on the entrance.

‘Who’s that?’ he shouted.

He fired at a lampshade, which exploded in a shower of glass. The sound of the shot continued to echo for several seconds. Without knowing why, he ran out into the street and looked around. No one in sight. He drew a deep breath.

Step by step, hugging the walls and taking cover behind columns, he ventured back into the hotel. He couldn’t stop gulping.

He reached the video camera. No lights were on in the corridor beyond it, which led to the restaurant. Jonas raised the gun, intending to fire into the gloom. He tried to cock the weapon, but it jammed. He flung it away. The missing knife crossed his mind.

‘What’s the matter, eh? What’s the matter? Come on, don’t be shy!’

He yelled the words at the darkness. All around, everything was quiet.

‘Hang on! I’ll be back in a minute!’

He grabbed the camera and dashed outside. Tossing it onto the bunk complete with its tripod, he locked the doors of the cab and drove off.

He pulled into the next service area. There was a TV in the café. He looked at the video camera. It was the model he used himself.

He went and fetched a lead from the truck. Having connected the camera to the TV, he raided the drinks shelf. His toothache was coming back.

He started the tape.

*

A man on a station platform wearing the blue uniform of the Austrian State Railway. Whistle in mouth, he was pumping his bat up and down as though signalling to an engine driver.

It was night-time. A train was standing alongside the platform. The uniformed man blew a shrill blast on his whistle and gesticulated in an incomprehensible manner. As if the train were about to pull out, he ran along beside it and leapt aboard. Recovering his balance, or so it seemed, he disappeared inside the carriage. The scene was so perfectly staged, Jonas had the momentary impression that the train was moving.

He looked more closely, his head swimming. The train was stationary.

A blue sign in the background read: HALLEIN.

The uniformed man did not reappear. A few minutes later, without any footsteps being heard, the tape ran out.

*

Jonas pocketed the tape and replaced the camera and lead in the truck. He acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Whistling a tune with his hands in his pockets, he sauntered across the car park to the filling station and back. He looked round surreptitiously. Nobody seemed to be watching him, no sign of anyone near him. He was surrounded only by the wind.

*

He felt defenceless without the shotgun. When he passed the station building in Hallein and gained access to the platform by a side entrance, he behaved as if his leg were hurting. He hobbled along, clutching his knee and groaning.

“Oh, ouch! Arrgh!”

Nothing. Nothing spectacular, anyway. According to the noticeboard, the train standing at the platform was bound for Bischofshofen. Jonas got in. Coughing and calling out, he searched each carriage and compartment in turn. The train smelt of stale tobacco smoke and damp.

At the end of the train he jumped out onto the platform again. He was so bewildered, he forgot to limp.

The automatic door that led to the booking hall whirred aside. He sprang back. Motionless, he stared out into the concourse. The door slid shut again. He stepped forward and it opened once more.

Dangling from the roof of the booking hall were eleven ropes with greatcoats attached to them. They looked like hanged men. Only the bodies were missing.

A twelfth was lying on the ground. The rope had snapped.

His legs were numb by the time he hurried back to the truck. He was breathing heavily. The stitch in his side was growing more painful by the second. Now and then he heard himself cry out. His voice sounded hoarse and strange.

*

Jonas got to Kapfenberg late in the afternoon. He still had time, so he drank a coffee in the garden of a café in the main square. He relaxed and stretched his legs, looking around like a visitor checking out his holiday resort. He had passed through Kapfenberg in the train a few times. Apart from that, he hadn’t been there since he was a boy.

He went in search of a gun shop. After walking around fruitlessly for half an hour, he went into a phone booth and consulted the directory. There was a gun shop on his route. He returned to the truck.

The shop catered exclusively for sportsmen. He couldn’t see a pump-action, and there weren’t even any ordinary small-bore shotguns on display. On the other hand, he couldn’t complain of the selection of sporting rifles. He helped himself to a Steyr 96 — he seemed to recall reading about its ease of operation somewhere — and filled his pockets with ammunition. Then left the shop in double-quick time. He had to get there before sunset at all costs.

From Krieglach onwards he followed the map. He hadn’t been there for twenty years. Besides, never having driven there himself, he’d paid little attention to the route.

Beyond Krieglach the road began to wind and climb. Just as he began to worry that the truck would be too wide for the steadily narrowing road, he came to an intersection. After that the road widened again.

Jonas had estimated that his destination would come into view after half an hour, but forty minutes went by before he thought he recognised a particular bend in the road. He had a feeling his goal lay just beyond it, and this time he wasn’t mistaken. Almost obscured by the long grass bordering the road was a wooden sign welcoming him to Kanzelstein. The sign was unfamiliar, but not the view that met his eyes when he rounded the long bend. On the left stood the inn run by Herr and Frau Löhneberger, which only attracted customers from the surrounding villages on Sundays. On the right was the holiday house. Between these two buildings the strip of asphalt petered out into a narrow, dusty track that disappeared into the forest. This was as far as you could go, at least by car. Jonas had found it surprising, even as a boy, that a village could consist of only two buildings, the more so since one of them was occupied only at certain times of the year: at Christmas, New Year and Easter, and during the summer.

Where it came from he didn’t know, but the sight of the two lonely buildings filled him with a vague sense of dread. It was as if something was wrong with the place. As if something had been waiting for him and had hidden itself just before he arrived.

That was nonsense, though.

His ears popped. He pinched his nose and breathed out with his lips compressed to equalise the pressure. Kanzelstein was 900 metres above sea level. ‘The healthiest altitude of all,’ his mother had never failed to mention when they got there, ignoring the look of impatience on his father’s face.

Jonas sounded his horn. Once he had satisfied himself that a light flashing in one of the windows of the inn was just the reflection of the sun, he jumped down from the cab. He breathed deeply. The air smelt of forest scents and grass. A pleasant aroma, but fainter than he’d expected.

Parked outside the holiday house was a brightly painted Volkswagen Beetle, and beside it a motorbike. Jonas checked the number plates. The holidaymakers came from Saxony. He peered into the car but could see nothing of importance.

With the rifle under his arm he plodded along the path to the garden gate in front of the holiday house. His heart was beating faster. He couldn’t help reflecting, at every step, how often he’d trodden this path, but as an entirely different person leading an entirely different life. Twenty or more years had gone by. The surrounding fields, the forest looming darkly beyond the house, he’d seen them all as a boy. He remembered the house well. Did the house remember him? He had eaten meals, watched TV and slept within its walls. That lay far in the past, but to him it was all still valid.

The front door wasn’t locked. That came as no surprise to him. The locals never locked their doors for fear of being thought needlessly suspicious. His parents had also observed this convention and given him many an uneasy night as a child.

There were two rooms on the ground floor: a storeroom and the games room. He glanced inside. The ping-pong table was still there. He even remembered the view from the window.

The first floor was approached by a winding, creaking flight of stairs. There Jonas was confronted by five doors. Three led to bedrooms, the fourth to the bathroom, the fifth to the kitchen-cum-living-room. He went into the first bedroom. The bed had not been made, nor had the suitcase on the table been unpacked. It contained clothes, toilet articles and books. The room smelt stuffy. He opened the window and looked back down the road he’d come by.

In the second bedroom, whose window faced the Löhnebergers’ inn, the bed was made up but had not been slept in. An alarm clock was ticking on the rickety bedside table. Startled, Jonas picked it up, but it was a battery-powered model.

He looked around the room once more. The red-and-white-checked bedspread. The faux baroque wooden panelling. The crucifix in the corner. He himself had never slept in this room. It had usually been allocated to Uncle Reinhard and Aunt Lena.

The last and largest bedroom was a regular dormitory. The balcony blinds were lowered. They rose with a familiar rumble when he pulled them up. He looked at the décor. The room resembled a hospital ward. Six single beds stood facing one another in two rows of three. At the foot of each iron bedstead was a bar of the kind a patient’s medical record might have hung from. Jonas tapped the metal with his fingernails. He and his parents had slept in this room several times.

He went out onto the balcony and rested his hands on the balustrade. The wood beneath his fingers was warm. In many places it was encrusted with blobs of bird shit the rain had failed to wash off.

The forest stretched away below him. Mountains and hills, wooded slopes and alpine pastures were visible on the skyline. He remembered this view well. This was where his father had sat in a deck chair with his crossword puzzle, and where he himself had hidden from his mother when she wanted to show him something in the garden. They both stood firm to begin with, but his father had sent him downstairs when her voice became steadily shriller.

From the living room he looked out at the garden. The redcurrant bushes were still there. The vine arbour, the benches, the crude wooden table on which they’d played cards, the garden fence, the fruit trees, the rabbit hutch, all were still there. The grass needed cutting and the fence needed repairing, but in other respects the garden was in reasonable condition.

The view triggered a memory. He had dreamt of this garden some years ago. Here among the apple trees he’d seen a man-sized badger cavorting on two legs. The creature, whose face looked like Grandpa Petz from the children’s TV programme, came prancing across the garden in a series of strangely rhythmical movements. It bobbed up and down instead of swaying to and fro. After a while, Jonas joined in. He was frightened of the huge beast, which was twice his size, but it showed no hostility towards him. They had danced together, and he’d felt good.

Having carried his gear into the room whose bed had been slept in, he stripped off the duvet cover and sheet and fetched some clean ones from the biggest bedroom. By the time he’d finished he had to turn on the light. He was growing jittery.

He made sure everything that mattered was inside the house, then noted down the truck’s kilometre reading and locked it. Passing the old skittle alley, he headed for the entrance to the inn. The decrepit Fiat in the car park must have belonged to the Löhnebergers.

The doorbell tinkled as the door closed behind him. He recognised the sound. The bell had been there in the old days. He waited. Nothing stirred.

A second door led to the bar and restaurant. Jonas wasted no time on reminiscences. He simmered a packet of peas from the freezer, adding some wine and stock cubes to improve their flavour, if only marginally.

Should he climb the stairs to the Löhnebergers’ private quarters? He’d never been up there before. A glance out of the window reminded him that the sun was already low in the sky. He put two bottles of beer in a plastic bag.

*

All seemed peaceful.

Jonas strolled through the garden, combing the long grass with his fingers. He picked some redcurrants. They tasted insipid. He spat them out. Behind the house he came to the door of the wood cellar. He’d forgotten about that.

Still standing in the middle of the cellar, which was lit only by such sunlight as could penetrate the little window above the woodpile, was the big tree stump used as a chopping block. The cellar was another of the places where Jonas had hidden from his garden-obsessed mother. He’d used his pocket knife to carve little figures out of blocks of wood, some of them quite successful, and had left a sizeable collection of them behind at the end of the holidays. Although he hadn’t liked sitting in this gloomy vault, he preferred the company of spiders and beetles to that of his overzealous mother.

He peered at the corner behind the door. Looked away, looked again. There were some tools there. A spade, a hoe, a broom. And a walking stick.

He looked more closely, then picked up the walking stick. It was decorated with carvings.

Jonas took it outside for a better look. He recognised the carvings. No doubt about it. It was the stick the old man had given him.

He went inside the house. Luckily, he found the key in a little box beside the front door, which he locked behind him. He thought for a moment, then put the key in his pocket. Having opened a bottle of beer, he sat down in the living room and examined the walking stick.

Twenty years.

This walking stick was unlike the bench he was sitting on, or the bed on which he would later lie down, or that wooden chest over there. Twenty years ago it had been his property, and in a certain sense it had never stopped being that. It had stood in its grimy corner, ignored by everyone. On twenty separate occasions, people nearby had celebrated the last day of the year and let off fireworks, but the walking stick had continued to stand propped against the wall of the wood cellar, unconcerned by Christmas and New Year and visitors singing. Now Jonas had returned and the walking stick still belonged to him.

Much had changed since the last time he saw it. He had left school and done his national service, had girlfriends and lost his mother. He had grown up and started on a life of his own. The Jonas who had last touched this stick had been a child, an entirely different person. Yet not so different, for if Jonas searched his inner self the self he found was the same as the one he remembered. Twenty years ago, when he’d said ‘I’ with this stick in his hand, he’d meant the same person as he was today. He, Jonas, was that person. He couldn’t escape. Would always be that person. Whatever happened. Never anyone else. Not Martin. Not Peter. Not Richard. Only himself.

*

Jonas couldn’t bear to watch the night at its work. The blinds came rattling down as he lowered them. He connected the camera to the TV and put in last night’s tape.

He saw himself walk past the camera and get into bed.

After an hour the Sleeper tossed around for the first time.

After two hours he turned over on his side.

He continued to sleep in that position until the tape ran out.

Nothing, absolutely nothing had happened. Jonas switched off. Midnight. He was thirsty. He’d polished off the second bottle of beer a long time ago. All he could find in his bag of snacks from the filling station was a packet of pumpernickel, some chocolate bars and some cans of lemonade. He wanted beer.

He made his way out onto the landing, tapping the wall with his knuckles as he went. He turned off the light and peered out of the window. The darkness outside was impenetrable. Clouds had blotted out the stars. There was no moon. He sensed rather than saw the track that led past the skittle alley to the inn.

Uncle Reinhard had wanted to make a bet with him one night: Jonas was to go and get a bottle of lemonade from the inn. All by himself and without a torch, he was to sally forth into the darkness and buy a bottle from the Löhnebergers, who were serving some late customers. The banknote Uncle Reinhard produced from his pocket made Jonas stare wide-eyed and made his parents quietly groan.

Nothing to it, they all said briskly. There was a light above the inn door. It was only really dark near the skittle alley. He was chicken if he didn’t go. No fuss now, just get it over with quickly.

No, he said.

Uncle Reinhard came closer, waving the banknote under his nose. They were downstairs, just inside the front door. Jonas looked at the path that led past the skittle alley, looked at each grown-up in turn.

No, he repeated.

And that was that, even though his mother was gesticulating and pulling angry faces behind Uncle Reinhard’s back. Uncle Reinhard had laughed and patted him on the shoulder. Jonas would soon discover that ghosts didn’t exist, he said. His parents had turned away and hardly spoken to him for the next two days.

‘Don’t kid yourself,’ Jonas said, vainly scanning the darkness for some recognisable shapes at least.

He turned his head abruptly. He couldn’t get rid of the feeling that sooner or later, when he looked over his shoulder like that, the wolf-bear would be standing there. It would be there, and he would have known it would appear.

Leaving the rifle behind, he went downstairs. He opened the front door and stepped out onto the weatherworn flagstones of the forecourt.

It was cold. And pitch-black. No wind, no crickets chirping, no sound save the grating of pebbles on the flagstones beneath his feet. He couldn’t get used to the absence of sounds made by living creatures. Wasps, bees and flies could be annoying. He had cursed their persistent humming and buzzing a thousand times. The barking of dogs had sometimes struck him as a diabolical nuisance, and even some birdsong was strident rather than easy on the ear. But he would have preferred the whine of a mosquito to the relentless silence prevailing here. Even, perhaps, the roar of a prowling lion.

He had to go, he knew.

‘Well, this is it.’

He pretended to be holding something in his hand as if shielding it from view. Meanwhile, he ran through the forthcoming excursion in his mind’s eye. He pictured himself opening the garden gate, making his way past the skittle alley and, finally, reaching the inn’s terrace. He would open the door, turn on the lights, get two bottles of beer from the bar, turn out the lights and return by the same route.

‘Really nice,’ he muttered, scratching his palm with a fingernail.

In thirty seconds he would set off. In five minutes at most he would be back. In five minutes’ time he would be holding two bottles. He would also have proved something. Five minutes were bearable, they were a mere nothing. He could count off the seconds and think of something else.

His legs felt numb. He stood motionless on the flagstones with the open door behind him. Minutes went by.

So he was wrong. He’d been mistaken when he’d thought it would all be over in five minutes. He’d been destined to set off a few minutes later. The time he’d thought would mark the end of his ordeal was really its beginning.

He concentrated on making his mind a blank and setting off.

He thought of nothing, thought of nothing, thought of nothing. And then set off.

He bumped into the garden gate. Opened it. Stumbled through the darkness. Groped his way along the wooden wall of the skittle alley.

A crunch of gravel beneath his feet announced that he’d reached the car park. He glimpsed the terrace and hurried on. I’ll kill you, he thought.

The bell tinkled. He didn’t think he could bear it. His hand felt for the light switch. He screwed up his eyes, then cautiously opened them and looked round. Don’t think, carry on.

‘Good evening, I’ve come for some beer!’

He turned on all the lights, laughing harshly, and helped himself to two bottles of beer. Without turning off the lights he made his way back across the terrace to the car park. The glow from the inn windows was enough for him to see where he was going. But he could also see where the light ended and the sea of darkness awaited him.

When he plunged into the gloom he felt he wouldn’t make it. He would start thinking again any minute. And that would be that.

He broke into a run. Tripped and recovered his balance at the last moment. Kicked the garden gate open. Bounded across the threshold, slammed the front door and locked it. Slid to the floor with his back against it, a cold bottle of beer in either hand.

*

At 2 a.m. he was lying in bed, checking to see how much of the second bottle was left. The camera was facing the bed, but he hadn’t started it yet. He did so and turned over on his side.

He awoke and peered at the alarm clock. It was 3 a.m. He must have fallen asleep at once.

The camera was humming.

He thought he could hear other sounds overhead. Creaking footsteps, an iron ball rolling across the floor. At the same time, he was in no doubt that those sounds were all in his imagination.

He couldn’t help reflecting that the camera was filming him at that moment. Him, not the Sleeper. Would he spot the difference when he watched the tape? Would he remember?

His bladder was bursting. He threw off the bedclothes. As he passed the camera he waved, gave a twisted grin and said: ‘It’s me, not the Sleeper!’

He padded barefoot along the passage to the bathroom. On the way back he gave the camera another wave. He patted the dust off the soles of his feet before getting into bed. Then pulled the bedclothes over his ears.