Night Work

26

He awoke because it was hot and stuffy. At first he didn’t recognise his surroundings. Then he realised that he was lying inside the tent and the sun had warmed it up.

He felt his trousers. They were still damp. He picked up his clothes and tossed them out of the tent without giving them a thought. Taking the camping stove and two tins with him, he went outside.

The sky was cloudless, but a stiff, cool breeze was blowing. The grass beneath his bare feet was still wet. He looked round. There were no buildings in sight.

From one of the rucksacks the campers had left beneath the awning he took a pair of trousers — he had to roll up the bottoms — and a T-shirt too tight for him across the shoulders. He also pulled on a jumper. The socks he found were too small, so he cut off the toes with a knife. The sandals were also too small, but they would do at a pinch.

He strolled around while the contents of the tins were heating up in a saucepan on the stove. Fifty metres away was a clump of trees. He sauntered in that direction, then thought for a moment and walked back. Something was bothering him.

He examined the motorbike.

Both tyres were flat.

He took a closer look at them.

They’d been slashed.

*

Jonas set off in search of some village or town. His eyelids kept drooping. He was so tired, he felt tempted to sink to the ground, out here in the open, and pillow his head on his hands.

He’d been walking for a good hour when he came to a house. A car was parked outside. The key wasn’t in the ignition, but the front door was unlocked.

Beyond it lay a dim passage, ‘Hello?’ he called in English. ‘Somebody at home?’

‘Of course not,’ he answered himself politely.

Without dwelling on the noises in the house, a dark old cottage full of creaking beams, Jonas looked round the rooms in search of the car keys. He quickly averted his gaze whenever he caught sight of a mirror. Sometimes, when he glimpsed himself moving in a mirror on a wall or a wardrobe door, it looked in those gloomy rooms as if someone were standing behind him. Hemming him in, even. When that happened he lashed out with his arms but didn’t move from the spot, hard though he found it not to.

He discovered the keys in the pocket of a pair of jeans. Stuck to them was a wad of chewing gum. Despite himself, Jonas almost threw up. He didn’t know why.

*

He drove, unconscious of the passage of time and heedless of the countryside gliding past. When he came to a road sign he looked up at it, made sure he was still heading in the right direction, and slumped behind the wheel again. His mind was a blank, save for the images that flooded into his head unbidden and vanished as quickly as they had come. They left no impression behind. He was empty. Wholly intent on staying awake.

He managed to skirt London to the north. As soon as he felt satisfied he was clear of the city, he pulled up in the middle of the motorway, folded the seat back and closed his eyes.

*

4 a.m. He lowered the window. It was cold and damp outside. An unpleasant smell hung in the air, like burnt horn or molten rubber. All that broke the silence was the sound of his fingernails scratching the door panel. At this hour he would normally have heard birds twittering.

When he tried to drive off the car wouldn’t budge. Then it gave a sudden lurch and sent up a shower of red and yellow sparks, accompanied by a metallic screech.

He got out and shone the torch over the area immediately around the car. And then he directed it at the wheels.

All four tyres had been removed. The vehicle was standing on its bare hubs.

Some way from the car he came upon a smouldering mound he recognised as the remains of his tyres. A blackened tyre lever was jutting from.

There was no other car in sight. It was a long way to the next service area, and he didn’t know how far it was to the next exit road. He would have to leg it back to the last one, he supposed.

He stared irresolutely, first at the evil-smelling bonfire, then at the car. He was feeling devoid of energy. It had cost him an immense effort to get this far, and it would cost him an even greater effort to get to Smalltown and back. Such a soul-destroying thing to happen.

With his hands buried in his pockets, he set off in the direction he’d come from.

*

When he sighted a secondary road and, beyond it, a village, he scrambled down the motorway embankment. At around 6 a.m. he found a car with the key in the ignition. He debated whether to eat somewhere. First, however, he wanted to get further north. He didn’t like being so near London. It was deserted, he felt sure. He would only get lost in that vast metropolis and achieve nothing.

Jonas didn’t exceed 120 k.p.h. He would have liked to go faster, but he didn’t dare. Whatever it was, the tyre incident or a premonition, he felt he would expose himself to danger needlessly if he put his foot down too hard.

8 a.m. 9.11.2 p.m. The place names he saw on signs were familiar to him mainly from his childhood, when he was still interested in football and used to read newspaper reports about the English championship. Luton, Northampton, Coventry, Birmingham, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Stoke — the names of deserted towns and cities. They didn’t matter to him. All that mattered to him was the remaining distance to Scotland. Smalltown was less than five kilometres from the border.

Liverpool.

He’d taken an interest in Liverpool as a boy. Not much, because he didn’t like the football club. And not because Liverpool was the home of the Beatles. But the name had such a peculiar ring to it. There were words that seemed to change as you looked at them or said them aloud, words whose meaning seemed to disappear before your eyes. There were dead words and live ones. Liverpool was alive. Li-ver-pool. Lovely. A lovely word. Like, for example, space, when it meant the universe. Space. So apt. So lovely.

England, Scotland: ordinary words. Ger-ma-ny: an ordinary word. But Italy, that was a word with soul and music. This had nothing to do with his liking for the country, it was the word itself. Italy was the country with the loveliest name, followed by Peru, Chile, Iran, Afghanistan, Mexico. If you read the words Ireland or Finland, nothing happened. Read the word Italy, and you sensed a kind of softness. It was a mellow, supple name. Eire and Suomi sounded much better than Ireland and Finland.

Jonas had often noticed that a word could drive you crazy if you read it several times in succession. You started to wonder if it was spelt wrong. Any word, nothing extraordinary, such as ‘flicker’. F. L. I. C. K. E. R. Fli-cker. Flick. Flick-er. Every word had something unfathomable about it. It was as if it were a fake that bore no relation to what it denoted.

Mouth.

Foot.

Neck.

Hand.

Jonas. Jo-nas.

He had always found it hard to read his name and believe that it indicated him. The name Jonas, written down on a sheet of paper. Those lines, those letters, signified that person. Person — another of those words. Per-son. Perrrson. Prrrrr.

Just beyond Bolton, it was late afternoon by now, he folded the seat back, but not before he’d got out to make sure there was no tyre lever in the boot and he had no knife with him. He locked himself in.

*

It was dark when he opened his eyes. He was sitting in the car, but his surroundings seemed to have changed.

3 a.m. The air smelt of rain. Jonas was cold, but not hungry or thirsty. He turned on the interior light. He rubbed his face. It felt greasy. A piece of spaghetti was stuck to the ball of his thumb. From the taste in his mouth, he might just have polished off a rare steak. His breath reeked of … What was it? Wine. The smell revolted him. He felt in his pockets. No chewing gum. Nothing that might have taken away the taste in his mouth.

He turned the key in the ignition. The car wouldn’t start. The fuel gauge stood at zero.

He got out. The ground was wet. It was drizzling. Some distance away he caught sight of a lighted window. While walking towards it he was surprised to see the silhouette of an aircraft. Beyond it he made out another, and another. Was he dreaming? He went over and touched the landing gear. The tyres were real enough.

He had an urge to call out, ‘Hooo!’, but didn’t dare.

The closer he got to the lighted window, the more mystified he became. Where was he? An airfield or airport, that was obvious, but where? Bolton? Liverpool?

He slowed his pace, looking up at the window. It seemed to be an office window. He thought he could see some pot plants behind the blinds, which were half lowered.

He wasn’t sure if what was waiting for him up there was entirely good.

He turned round. No one there. Nothing to be seen in the gloom, not even vague shapes, and he had only a rough idea of where he’d left the car.

It wasn’t that he’d sensed someone nearby. On the contrary, he’d never felt so remote from everything in his life. Even so, he thought it better to change his location, so he ran for fifty metres, silently zigzagging like a hare. This brought him to a building with a big sign on the side.

Exeter Airport.

Exeter? Surely not? He knew the city by name because special products were manufactured there for the processing of wood for furniture-making. Although he’d never been there, he knew roughly where it was: far to the south and almost on the coast.

A whole day’s driving wasted.

He belched involuntarily, reeking of wine.

Quite suddenly, his legs started to tremble. He felt weary, infinitely weary. His one remaining wish was to stretch out and go to sleep. He was so eager to escape from the profound inertia that filled him, it didn’t matter to him at this moment that he might once more put himself at the mercy of a process he couldn’t understand, still less control. He longed to rest, to lie down and sleep. But not here on the rain-soaked asphalt. Somewhere comfortable, or at least soft. Not cold, anyway.

Like a blind man, with one hand held out in front of him, he tottered back to the car.

*

He awoke just before 7 a.m. Although he didn’t feel fully rested, his tiredness was less tormenting.

He wrote Jonas, 14 August on a slip of paper. Before putting it behind the windscreen he looked at the letters he’d written. Jonas. That was him, Jo-nas. And 14 August, that was today. This 14 August would never recur. It was a one-time occurrence, so the memory of it would be unique. The fact that there had been other days bearing this date, a 14 August in 1900, another in 1930, others in 1950, 1955, 1960, 1980, was a human simplification, a lie. No day ever recurred. None. And no one day resembled another, whether or not people lived through it. The wind blew north, the wind blew south. The rain rained on this stone, not that. This leaf fell, that branch snapped, this cloud drifted across the sky.

Jonas had to find himself another car. After walking for an hour he came across an old Fiat whose rear seat was covered with soft toys in plastic wrappings. Beer cans lay scattered around it, some full, some empty. The taste of raw meat still lingered on his tongue. He rinsed his mouth out.

A locket was dangling on a chain from the rear-view mirror. He opened it. It contained two photographs. One was of a smiling young woman, and concealed beneath it was one of the Virgin Mary.

*

Jonas took the exit road to Bristol, fighting off a renewed urge to sleep. Several times he pulled up, walked around for a bit and performed some exercises. He never stopped for long. The wind was so strong it almost blew him off his feet. He felt he oughtn’t to stray too far from the car.

Midday came and went, but he drove on. He didn’t want to go to sleep, he wanted to drive on. On and on.

Liverpool.

The mysterious videotape came to mind. The one on which he’d seen his mother and grandmother. He didn’t want to think about it, but the images forced themselves on him. He saw the old woman’s waxen face, saw how she seemed to be talking to him soundlessly.

Preston.

Lancaster.

Only 150 kilometres to the Scottish border. He couldn’t go on, though. He knew it would be a mistake to go to sleep, but every fibre of his being cried out for rest. He couldn’t steer straight any more.

He pulled up and lowered the driver’s window, shouted something and drove on.

He didn’t know how much further he’d gone when he noticed that his left eye was shut. His right eyelid, too, was almost beyond control, and his chin was propped on the steering wheel. He wondered where he was going.

Where was he going? Why was he in this car?

He had to sleep.

*

Jonas opened his eyes, but everything was still dark. He tried to get his bearings, couldn’t even remember going to sleep. His last memory had been of the motorway, the monotonous grey ribbon ahead of him.

He straightened up with a jerk and hit his head, let out a yell and sank back, rubbing his forehead.

His voice had sounded hollow. Where was he? He seemed to be holding a knife in his hand. He checked with the other hand. Yes, it was a hunting knife or something similar.

He found he couldn’t turn round, he was hemmed in on all sides. He could barely move, there was no room. His legs were bent, his body was doubled over.

Where was he?

‘Hey!’ he shouted.

He thumped the wall with his fist. Just a dull thud, no echo.

‘Hey! What is this?’

He braced both forearms against the obstruction above him, but it didn’t move.

A coffin.

He was in a coffin.

He hammered on the walls of his prison and shouted. His voice sounded muffled, horribly muffled. Something seemed to explode inside his head. He saw colours he hadn’t known existed. Inexplicable images danced in front of his eyes, mingled with sounds. A penetrating smell of glue filled the box he lay in. He lashed out with his feet. Another wall, Before long, his feet and fingertips felt as if they were on fire.

Was a fire being lit under him? Was he being roasted in a vessel of some kind?

He thought of Marie.

He thought of the Antarctic. Of the signpost at the South Pole. He tried to send his mind there. No matter where he was, no matter what was happening, the Antarctic existed, the signpost existed. A little in his head but entirely so in reality. It would be there even when he himself was no more.

‘This can’t be happening!’ he shouted. ‘Help! Help!’

Mouth open wide, he positively wrenched the air into his lungs. He realised he was hyperventilating but couldn’t help it. He was wasting precious oxygen, that was no less clear to him.

At that moment, halfway through a violent intake of breath, time suddenly slowed. His breathing lost its spasmodic quality, he noticed, and all became calm and steady. He lay quite still. As the second’s duration of a breath expanded to an eternity, he heard a swelling roar.

‘No!’ said someone, possibly Jonas himself, and he surfaced once more.

He ran a hand over his sweaty face.

And tried hard to think. If the Sleeper alone was responsible for all that had happened in the last few days, this was mere shadow-boxing. No one could shut himself up in a coffin and bury it. If the Sleeper had incarcerated himself, there must be a way out.

He kicked and pushed. To no avail.

How long would he take to use up all the oxygen in such a confined space? Two hours? Half a day? What would happen to him? He would become sleepy, then confused. He would probably be unconscious by the time he died of suffocation.

Sleepy? He was sleepy already. Utterly exhausted.

*

He opened his eyes. Total darkness.

His limbs ached with tension and from lying on a hard surface. His feet had gone to sleep. His hand was clutching the handle of the knife.

He had no idea how long he’d been asleep, it might have been ten minutes or four hours, but he still found it hard to keep his eyes open. This indicated that he hadn’t slept for long. Besides, he hadn’t suffocated. A space as confined as this couldn’t contain enough oxygen to last him many hours, that much was certain.

Unless there was some hidden source of air.

Unless things weren’t as they appeared.

The knife in his hand … A friendly invitation? More of a prop in a comedy, perhaps? The Sleeper certainly wouldn’t entomb himself of his own free will.

Or would he?

No, he must have overlooked something.

He investigated his prison once more. There was no scope for movement on the side his head was resting against, nor on the opposite side. He tapped the wall on his right. No form of aperture or lock — or, if there was, he couldn’t find it.

It was different on the other side. The left-hand wall felt the hardest. Above all, though, it wasn’t the same all over. There were cracks in it.

Laboriously, he switched the knife from his right hand to his left and began to probe these cracks. The wall didn’t seem to be a proper wall, it consisted of two overlapping metal cylinders. He dug and probed away in the hope of finding a gap. The blade snapped, leaving him with the useless hilt in his hand.

He fought back his feeling of resignation. This was a game.

He ran his fingers over the upper cylinder. There! Between the cylinder and the roof was a gap just big enough to admit his fingertips. He exerted pressure on the metal and pulled. The cylinder moved almost imperceptibly. Gripping it further down, he pulled some more. Once again he felt a slight movement.

Painstakingly, little by little, he shook the cylinder free from between the roof and its counterpart below. This brought more and more of his body beneath the massive metal component. He tried not to think about this.

He slid the cylinder over himself, panting hard. Once he had distributed the weight of the load better, he could breathe. He managed to raise the lower cylinder and squeeze beneath it. This created enough room on the right for the first cylinder. He rolled the second one over himself and, after much pushing and pulling, placed it on top of the first.

On the left, where he now had some elbow room, he felt something soft and rounded: an expanse of cloth. When he applied pressure with his fist, it sank in.

That was when it dawned on him.

His hand felt for the crack and found it. Felt for the catch and found that too. Pulled it and, at the same time, gave the cloth-covered wall a push. The seat folded forwards. He crawled out of the boot and onto the back seat of the car.

It was night. Stars were twinkling overhead. He seemed to be in the middle of a field. No road or track ahead of him. He looked to his right. Saw the tent but failed to catch on right away. It didn’t dawn on him where he was until he recognised the motorbike with the slashed tyres.

*

At dawn Jonas stopped at a filling station and heated up the contents of two tins on a squalid gas stove in the back room. He drank some coffee and drove on.

He was so tired he kept nodding off. On one occasion he would have hit the crash barrier if he hadn’t yanked at the wheel at the last moment. Undeterred, he drove flat out, racking his brains for some way out of this trap. Nothing occurred to him. His only recourse was to keep trying, to keep heading for Scotland and hope that he would get there before sleep overcame him.

Pills were a possibility, but where to get them? How was he to know which ones to take?

He drove on, jaws aching, eyes watering. His joints felt as if they were filled with foam. His legs were two numb stilts.

The M25. Watford. Luton. Northampton.

At Coventry he was so overcome with fatigue, he wondered what time of day it was. He saw the sun but didn’t know whether it was climbing or declining towards the horizon. He felt feverish. His cheeks were burning, his hands trembling so badly, he couldn’t open the ring-pull on a can of lemonade.

*

He was trapped in a limbo in which he dreamt and drove, dreamt and saw, dreamt and acted. He perceived sounds and images. He smelt the sea. He read signs that were transformed an instant later into scraps of memory, into dreams, into songs that were sung in his ear. Many of these dreams he retained for a while, wrestling with them or doubting their existence. Other, more abstract ones were of such short duration he doubted he’d had them at all.

Spacey Suite.

He thought he’d read the words, but they turned into a building under construction by workmen. The walls melted, dissolved, engulfed him. ‘I’ve nothing to do with this,’ said his inner voice. Feeling constricted for a moment, he coughed up some crystalline bubbles and breathed freely once more.

He dreamt he was climbing a flight of stairs, many hundreds of them, higher and higher. Then it seemed to him that, instead of dreaming it, he was recalling a dream, or an actual event from minutes or hours or years before. The effort of deciding which was right almost tore him apart.

‘Don’t you believe me?’ said his grandmother.

She was standing in front of him, speaking. Her lips didn’t move.

‘Stop that,’ said his mother’s voice. He couldn’t see her and didn’t know who she was talking to.

He saw the sun complete its day’s trajectory within a few seconds. Again and again it appeared on the horizon, glided across the sky, one two three four five, and sank in the west, leaving night behind it. Then it reappeared, only to speed on its way again and vanish. Night. Night lingered. It lingered and did its work.

*

He was roused by the cold and the whistle of the wind. He opened his eyes, expecting to see a road. Instead, he was flying. Or hovering in the air with an immense open space in front of him. He was at least fifty metres above the ground. Below and ahead of him glistened the sea.

After a few seconds he realised that he wasn’t flying or hovering; he was on board a ship, an enormous liner lying at anchor in a big harbour. He had no time to reflect on this, however, because another realisation hit him.

He was sitting in a wheelchair, unable to move his legs. Draped over his knees was a rug of the kind seen in films when paraplegics are taken out for an airing.

He made another attempt to move his legs. They didn’t move a single millimetre. He could wriggle and flex his toes at will, but that was all.

The wind was blowing a gale. He shivered. At the same time he was hot inside. He was too appalled by his crippled state to speak or think. Before long his mood changed. Horror gave way to dejection and dejection to fury.

Never to be able to walk again.

The fact that, being paralysed, he would probably never leave this ship, let alone reach the Scottish border or return to Vienna, came home to him in all its implications. What shocked him most of all, however, was that something irreversible had happened to him. Something would never again be as it had been. In their heart of hearts, everyone itched to commit some irrevocable act. Like pushing some inoffensive stranger in front of a train. Or jerking the steering wheel while driving at 180 k.p.h. Or throwing a friend’s pet dog out of a sixth-floor window. You didn’t have to be a murderer or a suicide to experience that urge. Just a human being.

And now it had happened to him. Something that divided life into before and after. In a way, this wheelchair meant something even worse than waking up in a world emptied of its inhabitants. Because it affected him directly. His body, his last frontier.

He gazed out to sea. Far below him, waves were breaking against the ship’s side with a monotonous, resounding crash. The wind carried the sound upwards, set a canvas awning fluttering, caused some tackle nearby to vibrate.

‘Yes.’

He had to clear his throat.

‘Yes, yes, that’s the way it is.’

*

Could a paraplegic really move his toes?

Could he really feel his thigh when he slapped it?

He tugged at the rug. It was so firmly pinned beneath him, freeing it was quite an effort. At last, with a sudden jerk, he pulled it off his lap.

And saw that his legs were tightly secured to the chair with insulating tape.

There was something shiny beneath his feet: a snapped-off knife blade. Performing painful contortions, Jonas managed to bend down and pick it up. He cut his bonds. The blood streamed back into his legs so violently he cried out.

It was several minutes before his limbs felt somewhat less numb. He stood up, holding on to the back of the chair. Dragging his left leg, which had gone to sleep, he hobbled into the cabin.

He’d never seen such a luxurious suite in any hotel, let alone on board ship: fine wood and leather, lights everywhere, comfortable armchairs, an outsize plasma screen on the wall. An elegant spiral staircase leading to an upper deck.

Some notepaper was lying on the bureau. Jonas looked at the letterhead: Queen Mary 2.

*

Southampton docks were the biggest Jonas had ever seen. Their size meant he very soon found a car with the key in the ignition.

He drove slowly through the deserted streets in search of a bookshop. At one point his route was blocked by a truck, but he didn’t dare get out to investigate. He felt he was negotiating a minefield. Although this English seaport seemed no more menacing and mysterious than any other deserted city, he found its lifelessness unpleasant, far more so than that of Vienna, where he was at least familiar with the streets.

A bookshop at last. He got out. A binbag full of empty wine bottles was lying on the pavement. He picked it up and hurled it blindly at some shop windows, hunched his shoulders and performed a clumsy dance, giving an impression of a drunken hooligan.

The door of the bookshop was open. A spacious two-storeyed establishment, it was lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Aluminium ladders were leaning against them. The musty interior smelt of paper, of books.

He found the reference section after fifteen minutes and a pharmacopoeia after another ten. Then came the hardest part of his task. He didn’t even know the German term for what he was looking for. There had to be some remedy for sleeping sickness. Sleeping sickness was also known as narcolepsy. So he looked up Narcolepsy. Nothing under that heading. Narcolon, Narcolute and Narcolyte were the first terms that appeared on the relevant page.

The nature and effect of those drugs were described in detail, and Jonas had to devote some time and effort to each entry before he could be sure that none of them would be of help. They were soporifics, not sleep-inhibitors. But what would a drug against sleeping sickness be called? Antinarco? Narcostop? He bit his lip and went on turning the pages.

Although it wasn’t midday yet, he could already feel tiredness stealing over him. This spurred him on. What he was doing now he should have done yesterday or the day before. If he allowed things to get to a stage where the Sleeper merely woke him up for brief periods in random locations before sleep overcame him once more, he would be …

Lost.

Yes, lost.

No, he was lost already. If the Sleeper gained complete control over him, he would be something other than that. What would he be then?

Conscious that he was staring into space, he straightened up again.

*

That afternoon he found it. He turned the page on impulse. At first he thought he was mistaken, believing that his clouded brain was merely misrepresenting what he was reading. But he checked and checked again until he was satisfied that, according to the pharmacopoeia, the drug Umirome contained various stimulants such as ephedrine and was one of the most effective remedies for sleeping sickness available.

*

A nearby chemist’s stocked Umirome. Jonas took a bag and filled it with boxes of the stuff, ten of them with sixteen tablets in each. If need be, he would take every last one.

There was a fridge in the back room. Jonas looked for some mineral water, but all it contained, apart from a slab of butter and a piece of vacuum-packed steak, were some two dozen cans of beer. He shrugged his shoulders and cracked a can. Modern drugs were OK with alcohol. Besides, gastric discomfort or mild inebriation were the least of his concerns. He swallowed a tablet and put the box in his pocket.

Maximum daily dose: two tablets.

He fished out the box again and took another.