Night Work

21

Jonas awoke, roused by the cold and the drops of moisture on his face. He opened his eyes without grasping where he was. Then it dawned on him that he was in the forest, and that it had started to rain. It was daylight, the sun no more than a pale glimmer in a mass of grey cloud. He shut his eyes again and didn’t move.

Some inner voice urged him to his feet. Without thinking, he set off in a particular direction. Leaning on the rifle, he trudged up slopes, scrambled over fences, stumbled across muddy hollows. He passed a barn but didn’t stop. He felt he mustn’t diverge from his route. As if through a veil, he realised that the rain was lashing his body. His sense of time had deserted him completely. He might have been on the move for one hour or four — he didn’t know.

A valley opened out in front of him. Some buildings came into view. The inn was the first one he recognised. All he felt was the wind and rain on his skin. No sense of relief.

*

He opened his eyes. There were no trees to be seen nearby. He wasn’t in the forest, he was lying in front of the garden fence.

He stood up and looked down at himself. His clothes were in tatters, his forearms covered with thin red scratches, his fingernails as black as a motor mechanic’s, and he’d lost his hat. Still, he seemed to be largely unscathed. He wasn’t in pain, either.

The garden gate squeaked. He noticed, as he walked up the gravel path to the front door, that he’d left the rifle behind. Instinctively, he clenched his fists.

‘Hooo!’

His voice went echoing round the house.

He stuck his head into the storeroom, the games room. Nothing had changed. He dashed into all the bedrooms. Nothing seemed to have been touched.

He avoided looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, but one brief glance was enough: there was something written on his forehead.

The glass felt smooth and cool beneath his fingers as he locked eyes with the face in the mirror. The inscription on his forehead was in mirror writing, so he read it the right way round:

MUDJAS!

Jonas had no idea what Mudjas meant.

He peered at the word more closely. It seemed to have been written with a marker pen, and he felt sure he knew which one. He would find it outside in the cab of his truck.

He stared at the reflected letters.

Perhaps he’s real and I’m the reflection?

Without removing the fingers of his left hand from the glass, he used his right hand to wash his face. At first he tried soap. When the letters merely faded a little, he resorted to a scrubbing brush lying on the floor, which had presumably been used for scouring the tiles. He held it under the hot tap, then scrubbed his forehead.

Having showered without thinking of the wolf-bear, he threw his torn clothes into the dustbin and changed into some clean ones. He couldn’t help reflecting, when his gaze fell on the things in his suitcase, that the last time he’d stood there, looking into the suitcase, he hadn’t known what lay ahead. He hadn’t known that he would be lost in the forest for two days. And this suitcase had lain on the table the whole time. It hadn’t moved, just waited. Had been neither looked at nor touched.

*

In the inn kitchen he plugged his mobile into the charger. He was surprised to see that it was already 4 p.m. by the digital clock on the stove. The rain had stopped, but clouds were scudding across the sky and the sun was invisible.

While the saucepan of water for the beans was rattling away on the hob, Jonas went in search of things he remembered. All the electrical appliances in the kitchen were new, like the TV, which was connected to a satellite dish on the roof. A soup tureen on a shelf looked familiar. He took it down and turned it round in his hands. It was almost deep and wide enough for him to have stuck his head in it.

He picked up a blue beer mug inscribed Lotta. He hadn’t thought of Lotta once since he’d been here, oddly enough, although he’d often helped the crippled maidservant to feed the hens. This had evidently been her personal mug. She was a beer drinker, he remembered.

He made another leisurely tour of the building. Occasionally he would touch some object, shut his eyes and commit the moment to memory. Days or weeks hence, perhaps months, he would shut his eyes and picture himself touching this lamp or that bottle opener. He would remember what he had thought and felt at the time. And that bygone moment was now. Right now.

He made sure all the windows were closed. He took a wooden-handled spoon from the taproom as a souvenir and stowed some beer in a plastic bag. Leaning against the old wood-burning stove, he ate the beans salted and tossed in garlic. He washed up. The bell over the door tinkled one more time. Then he was standing on the terrace.

He knew he would never return.

*

Jonas took the walking stick to the wood cellar and put it back behind the door. He contemplated it for a while, then gave it a nod and went outside.

He locked the front door of the holiday house and barricaded it with an armchair from the games room, fully aware that this was less a safety measure than an aid to preserving the illusion that he hadn’t entirely lost the initiative.

Then he sat down on the chest in the living room and drank some beer.

He had played cards and Memory over there.

He had sat on that bench and listened to the grown-ups talking over their wine.

He had hidden in this chest when playing hide-and-seek with Uncle Reinhard.

He added the empty bottle to the collection behind the door and helped himself to another. Fetching the camera from the bedroom, he turned it on and wound the tape back. While plugging in the leads he remembered a dream he must have had at some stage in the last forty-eight hours.

They were walking across a big field. He, Marie and hundreds of other people. He spoke to no one and no one spoke to him. In fact, he didn’t even see the others’ faces. They were there, though, all around him.

A monster was coming. It was rumoured to have been seen on that hillside over there. Several people claimed, wordlessly, that it was in an orchard on the far side of the valley. From time to time a rumbling sound could be heard, followed by a crash that shook the ground like an explosive charge. That was it, they said. It was roaming around and hunting people down.

Then he saw it. The creature had a hump like a camel, but it was far broader and heavier, and it walked semi-erect. Protruding from its back were two stunted wings. Over three metres tall, it went trampling across a lovely orchard. People were running away from it, screaming in panic. Most frightening of all was the way the ground shook. Those tremors indicated how huge and dangerous the creature was.

Jonas was standing some twenty metres away. The winged bear was hunting people, and with a speed that didn’t seem possible, given its immense bulk.

But no, the worst thing wasn’t its appearance and the tremors, as he’d initially thought. It was the fact that this creature actually existed. That it was rampaging around in defiance of all he’d thought possible.

Winged bear, he wrote in his notebook. 1500 kg. No voice. Rampaging, close.

He glanced through his notes on other dreams. Many referred to animals or creatures resembling animals. That surprised him. Animals had never been important to him. Although he respected them as fellow inhabitants of the planet, it had never occurred to him to acquire a pet.

Something about his entries puzzled him, but he couldn’t identify it. He read them over again and again. At last it dawned on him.

His handwriting.

It seemed to have undergone an almost imperceptible change. The letters sloped a little further to the left than before and he pressed harder when he wrote. What this signified, he didn’t know.

He was feeling heavy with fatigue.

He opened the window overlooking the garden. Nothing to be heard but the wind. He secured the bar and lowered the blinds.

Then he tiptoed into the dormitory and locked the balcony door, securing the wooden bars there too. Having checked the other windows, he locked the door leading to the ground floor and removed the key.

He pressed the camera’s play button and sat down on the wooden chest.

*

He saw himself walk past the camera and get beneath the covers. Before long he heard regular breathing. The Sleeper lay there without moving.

Jonas stared at the screen. Although the beer was taking the edge off his agitation, he kept glancing over his shoulder at the big old dining table. The eight chairs. The three-legged stool. The wood-burning stove.

The Sleeper got out of bed, waved at the camera and said: ‘It’s me, not the Sleeper!’

Jonas heard a door opening, footsteps receding. A minute later the toilet was flushed. He saw himself give the camera another wave and get beneath the covers.

He rewound the tape. It wasn’t the Sleeper he looked at during the minutes before he got up and went to the toilet. It was himself, he was awake and ruminating. He got up, went to the toilet and got into bed again. And he looked no different from the Sleeper.

He let the tape run on. The Sleeper was snoring, one arm over his eyes as if dazzled by the light. He turned over twice before the tape ended. Nothing else happened.

*

He took the camera back into the bedroom and inserted a new tape. Then he got undressed and went to the bathroom to clean his teeth. He didn’t turn his back on the door for an instant, nor did he look in the mirror.

His last thoughts before going to sleep were of Marie. They had often been apart. The only time it had troubled him was when she’d spent a few days in Australia between flights. They were so far apart that synchronicity was impossible. When he looked up at the sun, he couldn’t picture her doing likewise at exactly the same moment. That was the hardest thing. Although far apart, they should at least have been able to lock eyes in space. He had consoled himself by imagining that the sun, on its journey westwards, was conveying a look from her to him.

Had they locked eyes in the sky today?