Night Work

25

At Linz he made a special detour from the motorway to visit the Spider. He climbed through the shattered glass door into the car showroom. The Spider was where it had come to rest, the kilometre reading unchanged.

Jonas got in behind the wheel. He touched the gear lever, touched the heating, air-conditioning and warning-light controls, depressed the pedals. He shut his eyes and cast his mind back.

It was strange. Having thought he would never regard this car as his property, he now recalled the trips he’d made in it. He remembered what it was like to be the Jonas who had sat here and driven this sports car around Vienna.

He recalled the day he’d brought the Spider back here. He had loaded up the Toyota, never thinking he would return. And the Spider had stood here on its own all this time. While he was elsewhere.

He wrenched his eyes open and smacked his forehead with the flat of his hand. If he continued to sit here he would fall asleep in no time. He had woken up so exhausted this morning, he’d kept the truck to the middle lane for fear of nodding off.

He sounded the horn as he drove away and gave the Spider a final wave.

*

A good opportunity to set up the next camera presented itself just beyond Passau. Jutting out from the dilapidated walls of a road maintenance depot was an overhanging roof, beneath which sacks of salt were stored for protection in winter. He set up the camera beneath this with the lens trained on the direction he’d come from and programmed it to start recording at 4 p.m. the next day.

He read the kilometre mark on a post in the ground and recorded it in his notebook, then added the figure 3 and drew a circle round it. The 2 above it referred to a car park near Amstetten, the 1 to a sign between Vienna and St Pölten. Those first two cameras were in the open. He hoped it wouldn’t rain before he returned. If it did, at least the tapes should be intact.

He emptied a bottle of water over his head and drank a can of some energy drink that claimed to contain as much caffeine as nine cups of espresso.

The air was cool, the temperature well below what he was accustomed to in Vienna. Fields of maize stretched away on all sides. A tractor stood abandoned on a farm track.

‘Hello!’

He walked across the carriageway and climbed over the crash barrier. No parked cars. No sign of life. Nothing.

‘Hello!’

Although he shouted as loudly as he could, his voice sounded feeble out here. The moment he stopped, it was as if no man-made sound had been heard here for an eternity.

*

He had lunch at a service area near Regensburg. The café yielded some onions, noodles and potatoes, fortunately, so he didn’t need to touch his stores. After eating he wrote Jonas, 10 August on one of the menu boards.

He set up the fourth camera beside the filling station. He noted down its location, then programmed the tape for 4 p.m. the next day and filled up with diesel. In the shop he spotted a coffee mug with his name on it. He stowed it in a bag, together with some cold drinks.

He was dog-tired. His eyes were smarting, his jaw ached, and his back felt as if he’d been lugging sacks of cement around for days. When he got in behind the wheel he almost gave in to the lure of the bunk behind his seat. If he went to sleep now, however, he would have to drive too far tomorrow, and he didn’t want to be pressed for time.

The next cameras he set up near Nuremberg, one before the exit road and one beyond. The seventh he stationed at the exit road to Ansbach, the eighth at Schwäbisch Hall. Despite the possibility of rain, he left the ninth in the middle of the carriageway near Heilbronn. The tenth, too, was simply left on the asphalt just short of Heidelberg, unprotected and without a tripod.

Half dreaming, he drove through tracts of countryside he’d never seen before. They failed to arouse his interest. Sometimes he was aware of the luxuriant scenery, the dense forests and lush meadows and friendly little houses near the motorway. Sometimes he seemed to be driving through an interminable wasteland, a bleak grey wilderness of ramshackle barns and scorched fields, unsightly factories and power stations. It was all the same to him. With precise, unvarying movements he set up his cameras and got back into the truck.

*

At Saarbrücken he could go no further. His target for the day had been Rheims, which would have meant a comfortable drive the next day. Even so, he’d driven far enough not to have to worry about getting there by 4 p.m.

He parked in the middle lane. Taking last night’s tape with him, he made his way round to the back of the truck. His legs were so weak, he couldn’t clamber aboard and had to use the remote control. The humming hoist carried him up.

He inserted the tape and dug out some biscuits and a bar of chocolate. Although the wound left by the extractions wasn’t hurting, he took two Diclofenac. He sank onto the sofa with a sigh of relief.

He shut his eyes. He meant to do so for only a moment, but it was an effort to open them again. They were smarting with tiredness.

He turned on the TV and selected the AV channel. The screen turned blue. Everything was ready, but he hesitated to start the tape. Something was bothering him.

He looked around but couldn’t put his finger on it. He sat up and had another look.

It was the rear entrance. He couldn’t see it because the Toyota was in the way. The tailboard had been left open to admit daylight, but he couldn’t relax like this. He turned on every available light and pressed the remote control. For a moment he thought he was falling forwards, but it was really the tailboard folding up towards him.

*

A bare room. No furniture, not even a window. White walls, white floor. Everything was white.

The naked figure on the floor was also white. White and so motionless it was a minute before Jonas realised he wasn’t looking at an empty room. He didn’t look more closely until he detected movement. Gradually, he began to make out shapes. An elbow, a knee, the head.

After ten minutes the figure stood up and walked around. It was covered from head to foot in white paint, or possibly dressed in a white leotard. Its hair was invisible, creating an impression of baldness. Everything was white: eyebrows, lips, ears, hands. It walked around the room in a seemingly aimless fashion, as if lost in thought or waiting for something.

Without a sound.

Over half an hour went by. Then the figure slowly turned to face the camera. When it raised its head, Jonas saw its eyes for the first time. Their appearance fascinated him. They were clearly wearing contact lenses, because no irises or pupils could be seen. The figure stared at the camera with two white orbs. Motionless. For minutes on end. Tensely.

At length it raised its arm and tapped the lens with the knuckle of its forefinger. It looked as if it were tapping its way out of the TV screen.

It tapped and tapped again. Mutely, white orbs staring, it continued to tap the screen.

Somehow, Jonas managed to operate the remote. He meant to switch off, but he pressed fast-forward instead. The tape ended after an hour.

*

Fresh air streamed into the stuffy interior when Jonas opened the tailboard. He drew several deep breaths, then picked up a pair of binoculars and jumped down onto the roadway. He spent a long time scanning the area with the binoculars clamped to his eyes.

Lifeless clusters of houses, abandoned cars up to their hub caps in mud. A scarecrow in an overgrown field, broomstick arms extended. Scattered clouds drifting across the sky. The only sound was that of his footsteps on the brittle asphalt.

In the cab he made a note of the truck’s kilometre reading and locked himself in. Without setting up a camera or getting undressed, he flopped down on the bunk and, with a final effort, pulled a blanket over himself. His eyelids felt like sandpaper.

Saarbrücken, 10 August, he thought. Now for some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll drive on. Everything’s OK. Everything’s fine.

Calm down, he told himself.

The motorway. Cars drove along motorways. Sitting in the cars were the people who drove them, their shoes planted firmly on the gas pedals. Those shoes contained feet. Austrian feet. German feet. Serbian feet. Feet had toes. Toes had nails. That was the motorway.

Stop thinking, he told himself.

His face sank ever deeper into the decrepit mattress, which smelt of a stranger’s sweat, as if someone were pinning him down.

He turned over, wondering why sleep wouldn’t come.

He heard noises he couldn’t identify. For a while he got the impression that someone was rolling marbles across the roof of the cab. Then he thought he heard something creeping around the truck. He was past moving. The blanket had slipped off. He felt cold.

*

He leant over the driver’s seat and peered through the windscreen, blinking. A red sun was edging above the hills on the skyline. Lying on the road in front of him was an object.

A camera.

He felt as if he hadn’t slept at all. Half senseless with fatigue, he climbed down from the cab. A dream from last night flashed through his mind, so he must have nodded off at least.

He made one circuit of the truck, swaying like a drunk. There was no one to be seen. He picked up the camera and climbed quickly back into the cab.

It struck him after a while that he was sitting limply in the driver’s seat, staring at the road. What was he doing there? He ought to be in the back — he wanted to watch the tape.

The camera. He examined it. All his cameras had been numbered since his video trip in the Spider. He checked. It bore the number of the one that had disappeared some days ago.

Something told him he would do better to leave here, not get out again to watch the tape. He locked the doors and helped himself to a can of juice from the glove compartment. Then he drove off.

The dream came back to him.

The images were clearer this time. He was standing in the bathroom of his flat on the Brigittenauer embankment. He could see in the mirror that his face, or rather his entire head, was undergoing a transformation. He acquired a different creature’s head every second. One moment he would be standing there with a bear’s head, the next with the head of a vulture, a dog, a pig, a stag, a housefly, a bull, a rat. Each metamorphosis took only the blink of an eye to complete. Head followed head in swift succession.

*

Jonas set up the eleventh camera on the road near Metz and programmed it for 4 p.m., like the others. He had breakfast in the back with his feet comfortably propped on the sofa table. The powdered coffee, which he drank from the new mug bearing his name, tasted bitter. The peach compote, on the other hand, he ate with gusto. It was a brand he’d often had as a child. The taste of it was on his tongue the moment he spotted the tin in the supermarket.

Still chewing, he jumped up and squeezed his way along the side of the truck to the driver’s door of the Toyota. He checked the clock. It read thirty kilometres more than the day before.

His weariness returned with unexpected intensity. He mustn’t sleep now, not for anything. He poured cold water over his head, soaking his shirt. Icy shivers ran down his spine. He did some exercises to stimulate his circulation and shook a few coffee bonbons into his palm. Instead of sucking them, he washed them down with an energy drink.

*

The unknown video was in black and white. It showed a hilly landscape clothed in woods and vineyards, but without any roads. The camera panned to a woman’s face and zoomed in. The face came nearer and nearer.

Something in his brain refused to understand, so it was several seconds before he grasped the significance of what he was seeing. He leapt to his feet and stared at the screen transfixed.

The woman on the screen was his mother.

The camera lingered on her face for some moments, then panned left to someone else.

His grandmother.

Her lips moved silently, as if she were speaking to him. As if the distance the words had to cover were too great.

Jonas wrenched out the lead that connected the TV to the camera. As he hurried to the rear of the truck, squeezing between the Toyota and the Kawasaki, he gashed his arm on a projecting piece of metal and felt a fleeting stab of pain. Still holding the camera as if it might explode, he hurled it as far as he could into the maize field beside the road.

Shuffling impatiently from foot to foot, he watched the tailboard close with agonising slowness. Then he shot the bolt and jumped into the cab.

*

He drove as if he’d turned on an autopilot. His mind was unavailable. Now and then he registered some feature of the world outside. He noticed abrupt changes in weather conditions, but they didn’t affect him, they were like something seen on TV. He read place names: Rheims, St Quentin, Arras. They meant nothing to him. It was a new smell that brought him back to the present. The air was heavy with salt. He would soon be at the coast.

This realisation seemed to cheer Jonas and remind him of why he was here. He had banished the videotape to the nethermost region of his consciousness. He was hungry, he noticed. Not knowing whether he would come to another service area, he pulled up on the hard shoulder in the shade of some tall weeping willows. The sun was high in the sky. It was sweltering.

While applying a dressing to the gash in his arm, he ruefully contemplated the devastation brought about by his hurried departure. The butter was on the floor, likewise the bowl containing the rest of the peach compote. Bits of peach were scattered all over the three-piece suite. The upholstery was stained with spilt coffee, that was the worst thing. Jonas got busy with a swab. After that he lit the camping stove and heated up two tins of stew.

As usual, his tiredness returned after he’d eaten. It was only one o’clock. He couldn’t afford to take a nap.

He rinsed the plate and saucepan with mineral water beside the road. The empty tins he tossed into the ditch. He’d already got into the cab when he thumped the steering wheel, climbed out again and retrieved the tins, which he shoved under the Toyota for the time being.

He took the next exit road. Thereafter he followed the map. It was up-to-date and accurate, and he had no trouble finding his way. At 2 p.m. he pulled up not far from the yawning mouth of the Channel Tunnel.

He wasted no thought on Calais, which once he would have liked to visit. He couldn’t imagine driving through a sizeable town, not now. As few buildings as possible and as few things that were big and overwhelming, that was what he wanted.

He began his preparations at once. He wheeled the DS down onto the unmade-up road that ran along the fence enclosing the railway tracks. Armed with crowbar and wire-cutters, he went in search of a way through it. He found one after a few hundred metres: a gate used by construction workers for delivering building materials, and it was open. He took the crowbar and wire-cutters back to the truck.

He debated what to take in his rucksack. Food and drink, certainly, and cartridges for the shotgun. A torch, matches, a knife, some string. But were a raincoat and a spare pair of shoes indispensable items of equipment? Maps and first-aid dressings were more important. And ought he to take an extra can of petrol, or could he be sure of finding another vehicle on the other side?

It was half past three when he fastened the straps of the rucksack. He went and sat in the back of the truck, where he was at least shielded from direct sunlight, if not from the heat. His fingers felt for something to occupy themselves with. He longed to shut his eyes for a little, but he knew he wouldn’t open them again for hours if he did.

He took out his mobile. The network display showed Orange, so he could, in theory, have phoned even from here.

He skimmed through his stored text messages. All were from Marie and one was several years old. Jonas had anxiously preserved it every time he changed mobiles. It was her first declaration of love. She’d written it, because she’d been too shy to come out with it during their most recent conversation, even though everything had already been said or hinted at. They’d intended to see in the New Year together, but Marie’s sister had been taken ill and she’d had to fly to England unexpectedly. Her message was timed at exactly 0.00.

Approaching, he thought.

At one minute to four he climbed onto the roof of the cab. He followed the second hand on his watch. At 4 p.m. precisely he spread out his arms.

Now.

At this moment almost a dozen cameras were coming to life, filming a landscape that existed for them alone. That stretch of motorway near Heilbronn, that car park at Amstetten. They existed purely for themselves at this moment, but he would witness it. This selfsame moment was occurring throughout the world. He was capturing it in eleven different places. Now.

And this one. Now.

In a few days, possibly weeks, he would watch the films of Nuremberg and Regensburg and Passau and reflect that he’d been standing on top of the truck at that moment. That he had set off afterwards, and that at the moment recorded fifteen minutes later he would already be below ground. On his way to England.

*

He kept to the strip between the tracks. This was a smooth expanse of concrete, fortunately, so he didn’t have to ride over any sleepers. The tunnel was wide for the first hundred metres. Then the walls gradually converged. His headlight illuminated the tube in front of him. The clatter of the engine was amplified by the confined space, and he soon regretted not having worn a helmet. He didn’t even have a handkerchief he could have torn up for ear plugs.

He was so tired he kept throttling back in alarm, under the impression that he’d spotted some obstacle ahead. He also fancied he saw pictures, faces, figures on the walls on either side of him.

‘Hooo!’

He was bound for England, he really was. He had to say it aloud to make himself believe it. He was really on his way.

‘Hooo! I’m coming!’

He rode flat out, undeterred by the fact that he could hardly keep his weary eyes open and was having to screw them up against the headwind. All fear had left him.

He was the wolf-bear.

Nothing could stop him now. He would surmount every obstacle. He was afraid of no one. He was on his predestined way.

You’re close to collapse, said someone at his elbow.

Startled, he gave the handlebars a jerk. His front tyre grazed a rail. He managed to regain his balance in the nick of time and throttled back. He would have to lie down for a sleep as soon as he got to the other side, even if only in a field in pouring rain.

And then an obstacle really did loom up ahead.

He mistook it for an optical illusion at first, but as he drew nearer the reflection of his headlight in the tail lights banished all doubt. It was a train.

He dismounted but left the engine running so he could see. He rested his hand on one of the buffers of the rearmost carriage.

Jonas was now so bemused with fatigue, he considered pursuing his journey on the roof of the train. Then it occurred to him that he couldn’t get a moped up there for one thing, and, for another, that there simply wasn’t room on the roof for a moped rider.

He checked the sides. The train and the wall of the tunnel were forty centimetres apart at most.

A moped wouldn’t go through.

Only a man on foot.

*

He was halfway along the tunnel, he estimated. That meant a fifteen-kilometre walk with a torch in his hand and legs that could scarcely carry him.

He set off. One step, one metre after another, with a beam of light ahead of him. Descriptions of wartime experiences surfaced in his mind. People were capable of walking in their sleep. Perhaps he was asleep already. Without realising it.

Marie.

‘Hooo,’ he tried to call, but he wasn’t up to producing more than a hoarse, uncontrolled whisper.

Hearing a noise behind him, he stopped short and shone the torch. Nothing, just rails.

The next few steps were an immense effort. Mountaineers must feel like this just before reaching the summit, he reflected. One step a minute. Or perhaps not a minute, only seconds. Perhaps he was walking at a normal speed. He’d lost his sense of time.

Again he thought he’d heard something. It sounded as if someone were walking along the tunnel in the same direction, fifty metres behind him.

The third time he heard the noise it didn’t seem to come from behind, nor was its source ahead of him. It was inside his head.

The decision to lie down wasn’t a conscious one. His knees buckled and the ground came up to meet him. He lay there, arms outstretched.

*

Unrelieved darkness. Jonas opened his eyes wide. Blackness.

He hadn’t known such darkness existed. Utter darkness, without a speck of light. It was so all-embracing, he had an urge to sink his teeth into it.

He felt for the torch. He’d put it down beside his head, but it wasn’t there. He felt for the rucksack but couldn’t find that either.

He sat up and collected his thoughts. The rucksack had been on his back when he went to sleep. Now it was gone, like the torch. Not only would he have to manage without his supplies, he would have to proceed in total darkness.

He wondered what time it was. His watch was an analogue model without a light.

He got to his feet.

Despite his fatigue, he set off at a trot. He felt that if he stopped again it would be the end. Something would suddenly be there. It was there already, he could sense it. The moment he lay down it would descend on him.

He had a sudden vision of the hundred or more metres of seawater above his head. He managed to brush it aside, but it soon recurred. He thought of something else. The vision returned. Himself inside a concrete tube with a gigantic mass of water overhead.

This is an ordinary tunnel.

It doesn’t matter what’s above the tunnel, sand or granite or water.

Jonas paused to listen. He thought he could hear water dripping, even hissing under pressure. At the same time, he had the feeling that something was robbing him of breath, as if the oxygen in the tunnel were being sucked out. Or displaced by something else.

He walked on, half supporting himself with one hand against the side of the tunnel.

He felt more and more afraid of noise. He feared an explosion might go off right beside his head and burst his eardrums.

There’s no explosion down here. Everything is quiet.

He had the feeling that he should have reached the end of the tunnel by now. Could he have turned around in his sleep? Could he be going in the wrong direction?

Or had he woken up somewhere else? Did the tunnel he was in lead nowhere? Would he walk on for ever?

‘Hey! Hello! Hey!’

Think of something pleasant.

His most enjoyable daydreams in the old days had transported him to distant lands. He had pictured himself standing on a seaside promenade, glass in hand, gazing out to sea. It didn’t matter to him whether he’d travelled there by car or in the chandelier-hung stateroom of a luxury liner. In his imagination he could smell the salt air and feel the sun caressing his skin. No worries, no more responsibility for others or himself. All he had to do was be at peace with himself and enjoy the sea.

Or he transplanted himself to the Antarctic, where it was never, in his imagination, unpleasantly cold. He trekked across the eternal ice beneath a blazing sun. He reached the South Pole, hugged some bearded scientists who were spending the winter at the research station there, and touched the signpost, thinking at that moment of his home.

Whenever things were bad in the old days, whenever he was suffering from personal unhappiness or professional dissatisfaction, he would dream himself into the distance. He’d wanted to know as little as possible about it in the past few weeks. Distance meant loss of control. And you didn’t plunge into some reckless venture when you sensed that everything was slipping through your fingers.

As he did right now.

He was mad, completely round the bend. Stumbling along in pitch-darkness. What did he think he was …

Think of the Antarctic.

He saw ice-clad mountains, blue and white. The ice across which he was hauling his rucksack was white, an infinity of whiteness. The sky above him was blue.

He had once seen a TV documentary in which scientists extracted a cylinder of Antarctic ice from a depth of one kilometre. The piece of ice they brought up was meant to help them understand climate change. Jonas was less fascinated by the climatic outlook than by the cylinder itself.

A piece of ice half a metre long and ten centimetres in diameter. Until a few minutes earlier, buried under millions of cubic metres of ice. Exposed to the light of day for the first time for — yes, since when? — a hundred thousand years. Frozen an eternity ago, this water had bidden the world a gradual farewell. Ten centimetres below the surface. Fifty. Two metres. Ten. And what a long time had elapsed between the day it left the surface and the one on which it reached a depth of ten metres. Jonas could scarcely imagine such a lapse of time, but it was a mere click of the fingers compared to the interval between ten metres and a kilometre.

Now it was there, that piece of ice. It was seeing the sun once more.

Hello, sun, here I am again. How’ve you been?

What was going on inside it? Did it realise what was happening? Was it pleased? Worried? Thinking of the time it began its descent? Comparing one time with another?

He had to think of the ice still down below, the immediate neighbours of the fragment that had been brought to the surface. Were they missing it? Envying it? Feeling sorry for it? And he had to think as well of the other ice two or three kilometres down. How it had got there. Whether it would regain the surface and when, and what the earth would look like when it did. What it was thinking and feeling down there in the dark.

Jonas thought he heard a sound. A distant roar.

He stopped. No, no mistake. The sound of rushing water was coming from up ahead.

He turned and ran, tripped and fell headlong, felt a sharp pain in his knee.

It seemed to him, as he lay there, that the track sloped gently downwards. Immediately afterwards he had the opposite impression. He stood up and took a few steps, but he couldn’t tell whether he was walking uphill or down. He seemed to be going downhill one moment and uphill the next, but he noticed that steps taken in the original direction were more of an effort.

He walked on. The roar increased in volume. His feet were splashing through water. The sound grew steadily louder. A clap of thunder rent the air. Seconds later he was standing in the open.

It was night. Lightning zigzagged overhead, followed almost simultaneously by fierce growls of thunder. Rain came pelting down on his head. The gusts of wind were so strong they almost blew him over. No lights on anywhere.

He quit the railway track in a hurry despite the storm. Before long he found an open gate in the fence. He turned left, where he thought he’d find buildings sooner. He might just as well have gone in the opposite direction. It was pitch-dark and he had no idea where he was going. He hoped he wouldn’t plunge straight into the sea, whose breaking waves he thought he could hear between claps of thunder.

He was walking across a field of long grass. A flash of lightning glinted on something a few metres away. A motorbike. The sides of the tent beyond it were ballooning in the wind.

Beneath the awning Jonas stumbled over wet rucksacks, trampled on shoes, caught his foot on a stone that was weighing down a mat. His fingers were trembling so much with cold and exhaustion, it took him a while to open the flap. He crawled inside but only zipped up the mosquito net so as to be able to see out.

He explored the interior by touch. His fingers found a sleeping bag. A small pillow. An alarm clock. Another sleeping bag. Beneath the second pillow was a torch. He turned it on. At that moment an all-enveloping clap of thunder rent the air. Startled, he dropped the torch.

He felt he must sleep very soon.

He retrieved the torch and shone it round the interior. In one corner were some tins of food and a camping stove. On the opposite side of the tent was a Discman with a stack of CDs beside it. In the corner near the entrance he found some toilet articles: razor, shaving cream, skin cream, a box of contact lenses, soap, toothbrushes. Lying between the rucksacks was a Bosnian newspaper dated 28 June and a sex magazine.

Jonas had a feeling that someone or something was nearby. Imagination, he told himself.

He turned off the torch. In the dark he stripped off his sodden clothes, unzipped the mosquito net and wrung them out beneath the awning. His shirt, trousers and socks he deposited on the other side of the tent and crawled, naked, into one of the sleeping bags. The other he used as a blanket. He turned his head and looked at the entrance, shivering.

While listening to the storm he wondered if there was higher ground nearby, or if he should be prepared for a lightning strike. Moments later the interior of the tent was lit up, bright as day, by an electric flash. He shut his eyes and made his mind a blank. The ensuing clap of thunder came several seconds later than he’d expected.

He tossed and turned, teeth chattering, but he couldn’t relax. The thunderstorm gradually receded, but rain continued to lash the roof of the tent, soaking the field and churning up the puddles that had formed. The wind tugged so hard at the tent poles, Jonas more than once expected to be buried beneath folds of sodden canvas.

Was that someone running his hand over the tent’s outer skin? Were those footsteps he could hear? He sat up and peered out. Amorphous darkness. He couldn’t even see the motorbike.

‘Get lost!’

No footsteps. Only the wind.

Jonas lay down again.

He was lapsing into sleep. Everything was drifting away.

Voices? Could he hear voices?

Footsteps?

Who was coming?