Night Work

22

England. The idea came to him while driving, when his mind had been blank for minutes on end. He now had a plan. Or an idea, at least. An idea of how to get to England.

He wanted to be home by early that afternoon, and he made it. With a final hiss of its air brakes, the truck pulled up outside the building next door. Then silence fell.

He tore the strips of sticky tape off the door of his flat. It felt cool inside. He opened all the windows to let the warm air flood in. He went round the flat, opening cupboards and drawers, singing and yodelling and whistling. He talked about his trip, putting in incidents that hadn’t occurred, but he said nothing about his adventure in the forest or the toothache that was troubling him more and more.

He heated up the last two tins of bean soup. Then, taking the rifle with him, he backed the Toyota out of the truck.

*

The items on display at the gun shop were dusty. Other than that, nothing had changed since his last visit. Taking a pump-action shotgun from the cabinet, he loaded it, went out into the street and fired in the air. It functioned perfectly. He went back into the shop and stocked up with ammunition.

He drove at random through the city centre. Occasionally he stopped and turned off the engine. He sat there, gazing at some familiar or unfamiliar building, drumming on the wheel or looking through the text messages on his mobile.

I’m just overhead.

He dialled her number. It rang. Five times, ten times. He wondered for the hundredth time why her recorded message didn’t cut in. The sound of her voice might have made it easier for him to reach a decision. On the other hand, he couldn’t discount the possibility that he might have reacted to it as he did to music or films. With shock, in other words.

His eye fell on the two guns on the passenger seat. An idea came to him.

From force of habit, Jonas looked in the rear-view mirror as he drove off. He caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes — his eyes. He wrenched the mirror off the windscreen and hurled it out of the window.

There was no sign that anyone had been at Rüdigergasse either. The slip of paper he’d left on the door was still there. He didn’t go inside the flat itself. With his new shotgun at the ready and the rifle slung across his back, he went down to the cellar. The shot-riddled door was standing ajar. He turned on the light.

The tap was dripping.

He stole along the passage. His father’s compartment was empty save for a few boxes. He unslung the rifle and propped it against the wall, stepped back and looked at it leaning, all by itself, against the grimy brickwork.

He had no idea why he did this. It simply pleased him to think that this gun would stand here for all eternity. The rifle that had been slumbering in a cabinet in Kapfenberg until four days ago had spent a long time, certainly weeks, possibly months, in that gun shop. Now it was here. Perhaps it was pining for its former surroundings, perhaps its former neighbours in that shop in Kapfenberg were missing it too. It used to be there, now it was here. That was the way of the world.

‘Goodbye,’ Jonas said softly as he left the cellar.

*

He went into a nearby pub and defrosted a frozen meal. Meanwhile, he wandered round the bar.

The people in the newspaper lying on the bar had been given black beards with a ballpoint. Many of their heads had sprouted horns and some of their backsides were adorned with curly tails. Several of the advertisements had been ringed in pencil, all of them for sexual contacts. The five mistakes in the picture puzzle hadn’t been marked.

Long practice enabled him to spot the differences between the two pictures at a glance. They showed a pair of prison inmates. One was fat and mournful-looking. The other was so thin he’d just squeezed through the bars of their cell and was grinning at his new-found freedom. The mistakes in the right-hand picture were as follows: (1) A finger missing from the fat man’s hand; (2) Five bars over the window instead of four; (3) A criss-cross scar on the thin man’s cheek; (4) The fat man’s extra double chin; and (5) A high heel protruding from one of the thin man’s shoes.

Laying the paper aside, he ate, then looked for the menu board. It was half hidden behind the espresso machine. He was about to wipe it clean with a cloth when he stopped short. Instead of a list of ‘Today’s Specials’ it bore a face drawn in chalk. The draughtsman had been no artist, of course, and the face on the blackboard could have belonged to any number of people. And yet. That prominent chin, that close-cropped hair, that nose. Many men had a chin and hair and a nose like that, but the face on the blackboard displayed no feature that Jonas himself did not possess. It was him.

*

Jonas was still so flummoxed, he nearly drove into a bollard. Looking up, he discovered that he’d strayed down a dead end in the 1st District. He put the car into reverse. The next side street was the Graben. He turned right. A minute later he pulled up in front of St Stephen’s.

The cathedral door was closed. He had to exert all his strength to open it.

‘Anyone there?’

The echoes of his voice sounded strange. He called again, louder this time. Without uttering another sound, he continued to stand in the vestibule for two, three, five minutes.

Silence lay heavy over the pews. The smell of incense was fainter than last time. One or two lights seemed to have failed. The nave was gloomier.

He nodded to left and right as he walked on.

The sacred figures projecting from the walls were more aloof and forbidding in appearance than ever. Neither the sculptures nor the paintings looked at him. They stared vacantly into space.

Puzzled by something that had caught his eye, he bent down to examine St Joseph’s plinth. A little coloured transfer was stuck to the stone. The height at which it had been applied suggested that it had been secretly left there by a child. It showed an old fighter plane. The caption read: FX Messerschmitt.

He sat down on a pew. Wearily, not knowing why he’d come, he surveyed his surroundings.

The pews were old and creaky. How old? A hundred years old, three hundred? Only fifty? Had war widows knelt here? Revolutionaries?

‘Anyone there?’ he called.

‘There-ere!’ came the echo.

He started to walk round again. In St Barbara’s Chapel he visited the meditation room reserved, so a notice board informed him, only for the use of those wishing to pray. Turning round, he passed another notice advertising guided tours of the catacombs. He walked on and came to the lift that took visitors up the North Tower. He pressed the button. Nothing happened. He tugged at the door and a light came on inside.

Hesitantly, he went into the lift. The door closed. The upholstered interior resembled a padded cell. A notice on the wall read, in English: Please put your rucksack down. It made him think of England and what lay ahead of him as soon as he’d rested for a while. He pressed the button. His stomach gave a lurch.

He held his breath without realising it. Up and up he went. The lift should have got there long ago. He looked for a stop button. There wasn’t one.

The lift came to a stop. Jonas got out quickly. The sunlight was dazzling. He put on his sunglasses and set off along the narrow walkway. The view was obscured by grilles intended to thwart potential suicides. A flight of steps led up to the Pummerin, a very big and heavy bell, which was hidden behind another grille. He inspected the bell but found it unimpressive.

On the viewing platform he took a breather. He stretched, rubbed his face, yawned, kicked some pebbles at the parapet. The wind was refreshing. Looking around, lost in thought, he paid no proper attention to the view until something caught his eye.

A telescope had been installed for the benefit of tourists. He inserted a coin in the slot and swivelled it to the north-east. The Danube Tower. The restaurant had stopped revolving and his banner was hanging limp. It must have happened during his absence. A short circuit, presumably.

It didn’t really matter. The word he’d dreamt of and written on the tablecloths had been a red herring. He hadn’t come across UMIROM again, at least.

Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted ‘Umirom!’ and laughed.

He looked at the panorama for a while longer. He saw the slowly revolving Big Wheel. The Danube Tower. The Millennium Tower. He saw UNO City and factory chimneys. He saw the Spittelau incineration plant, the Caloric Power Station. He saw churches and museums. Most of those places he had never visited. Although a small capital city, Vienna was still too big for anyone to become familiar with all of it.

The ride down was even more unpleasant. What alarmed Jonas more than being shut in was the thought that the brakes might fail and the lift plunge seventy metres. Once at the bottom he hurried to get out.

While descending the steps to the catacombs he tried to recall what he’d learnt about them during his school-days or on previous visits. It wasn’t much. There were two parts, he remembered. The older catacombs dated from the fourteenth century, the newer from the eighteenth. The older part, which contained the Cardinal’s Crypt, lay beneath the cathedral, the newer extended a little way beyond its walls. After serving as Vienna’s municipal cemetery during the Middle Ages, the catacombs had been abandoned for lack of space.

‘Hello?’

He came to a small chamber containing pews and brightly lit by lamps in every corner. A trail of candle-wax droplets led across the floor. He followed it.

He had to turn on the light in every chamber. If he failed to find the switch at once, he coughed and laughed. As soon as the ceiling light came on, he ventured further. Occasionally he paused. Nothing to be heard but his own rapid breathing.

He entered a narrow passage lined with clay vessels. The temperature here was noticeably lower than in the other chambers. Jonas couldn’t explain this phenomenon. The chambers weren’t separated from each other by doors, just stone sills.

He took three steps back into the chamber he’d just come from. Warmer.

Three steps forward. Colder. Far colder.

Something told him to turn back.

A faint glow was coming from a side chamber at the end of the passage. Jonas felt sure he hadn’t turned the light on. He wondered exactly where he was. Probably near the high altar. Still beneath the cathedral, anyway.

‘Hello!’

He remembered how it had been in the forest. How quickly he’d lost his bearings. This was no forest, true, but he didn’t feel like fumbling his way around the catacombs of St Stephen’s Cathedral. He knew his way back from here. If he went any further, that could change fast.

The light in the side chamber seemed to flicker.

‘Come over!’

‘Over,’ called the echo, and died abruptly.

He took a card from his trouser pocket.

Sleep, it read.

He laughed derisively. Taking the whole bunch of cards from his pocket, he shuffled them thoroughly and withdrew another.

Sleep, it read.

I don’t believe it, he thought.

He shuffled the cards again. Just as he was about to pick one, the truth hit him like a slap in the face. The third card he withdrew read Sleep. So did the fourth. And the fifth, sixth and seventh.

Sleep.

All thirty cards read Sleep.

He dropped them on the floor. Blindly, he dashed back through the musty subterranean chambers, up the steps to the exit, and out into the cathedral square. He felt in his pocket for the ignition key but failed to find it immediately. At last he got the engine started. The car gave a jerk as he drove off.

*

Jonas took the external lift to the top floor of Steffl’s department store in Kärntnerstrasse. He wasn’t so scared this one would crash, perhaps because it was a glass-encased, panoramic lift. Although aware of how high above the ground he was, he could see what was happening. That made the ride more acceptable.

He mixed himself a cocktail behind the counter of the Sky Bar. Should he put some music on? He removed a CD from its sleeve but replaced it in case it upset his equilibrium.

He sat down on the terrace. From there he had a thoroughly familiar view of the city centre. In front of him loomed St Stephen’s, bronze roofs gleaming in the light of the setting sun.

He had often been to this bar with Marie. The sight of its stylish clientele made her dream of a time when she herself would be rich and leisured, and she enthused about the white wines served there. Jonas had no time for Vienna’s smart young things, nor could he share her enthusiasm for wine, which he didn’t drink. But it had filled him with quiet self-assurance to sit here with her early in the afternoon, when the place was sparsely filled and she was off on a trip the next day. To sit quietly on the wooden deck, listening to the muted sounds of the city and gazing at the ancient cathedral. To reach across the table and stroke each other’s arm in silence from time to time. Those had been moments of great intimacy.

Jonas took a sip of his cocktail. He’d made it far too strong. He tasted again, grimaced and went to get a bottle of mineral water.

As he gazed across at the cathedral’s bell tower, he experienced a sudden hankering to be a child again. To be plied with jam sandwiches and fruit juice. To play in the street and come home dirty and be scolded for tearing his trousers. To be plonked in a bath and put to bed by his parents. To be careless and carefree. To have no responsibility for himself or anyone else. Above all, though, he wanted a jam sandwich.

He stared at the blackened walls of the cathedral. Over there, down below ground near the altar, was something extraordinary, he felt sure. It might not be dangerous. But it was something he didn’t understand.

And now his cards were down there. Many with the inscription face upwards, others not. Sleep, they said in his handwriting. Almost his handwriting. If he never went down there again they would continue to lie there until they crumbled away to dust. No one would ever read them, but there they would lie, enjoining sleep. Stone walls. A musty odour. And, when the last light had gone out, total darkness.

*

Jonas got home before dusk. He locked the door and checked all the windows. The clock on the bedroom wall was ticking steadily. A mellow sound.

He went into the kitchen. Once the coffee machine had stopped hissing, he poured himself a cup.

He had got all he needed from a stationer’s. He cut the sheet of thin card into equal rectangles, and wrote on them in thick ballpoint. As before, he tried to think of nothing, to make his mind a blank and write by instinct. He succeeded so well, that when he surfaced from the timeless void he momentarily wondered where he was and what he was doing there. When he awoke from his trance he had the feeling that something was wrong. After a few moments’ thought, he realised what it was. He had run out of blank cards.

Although his cheek was throbbing dully, he couldn’t resist the temptation to put a box of chocolates on the empty side of the bed. He set up the camera and put in last night’s tape, then sat down cross-legged on the mattress with his back against the wall. Defiantly, he opened the box of chocolates.

He was about to start the tape when it occurred to him that he might get chocolate on his shirt, and besides, he would be more comfortable in pyjamas. So he got undressed, trying to ignore the worsening ache in his upper jaw.

*

Jonas saw himself walk past the camera and get into bed. He tossed and turned for a minute or two. Then the movements beneath the bedclothes diminished and became more infrequent. After a while, faint snores could be heard.

Jonas removed the screw top of a liqueur bottle, a miniature, and drank a toast to the screen.

The Sleeper was asleep.

Jonas put a chocolate in his mouth. Moments later he bit so hard on the nut inside it he felt as if a knife had been driven through his skull. Trembling, he clenched his fists and waited for the pain to subside. When he could open his eyes again he threw the box of chocolates into the bin. He wiped away his tears with the ball of his thumb and took a painkiller.

The Sleeper got up. As he passed the camera he waved. ‘It’s me, not the Sleeper,’ he said with a smile.

‘What is this?’ Jonas exclaimed.

He searched his jacket pockets for the first tape he’d recorded at Kanzelstein. Meanwhile, he saw himself give the camera another wave and get back into bed.

‘Damn it!’

If he’d got the tapes mixed up, where had the other one — the one he’d recorded last night — got to? He’d felt sure he would find it in his jacket.

He looked in his holdall. The tape was right at the bottom. He read the inscription. Kanzelstein 1.

He stopped the tape in the camera and took it out.

Kanzelstein 2.

He rewound it.

He saw himself get out of bed. As he passed the camera he waved. ‘It’s me, not the Sleeper,’ he said with a smile.

Those eyes.

He rewound the tape.

He saw himself get out of bed, go over to the camera and wave, smiling. ‘It’s me, not the Sleeper.’

That smile.

That look.

He rewound the tape again and pressed freeze-frame.

He gazed into the Sleeper’s unblinking eyes.