Night Work

3

Jonas awoke fully dressed.

He thought he remembered putting on his pyjamas last night. Even if he hadn’t, he always wore something comfortable at home. He’d certainly got changed.

Or had he?

In the kitchen he found five empty beer cans. The beer he’d drunk — that he did remember.

After showering he threw some T-shirts and underpants into a bag before undertaking the depressing check of the window, TV and phone. He was hungry, but his appetite had deserted him. He decided to breakfast somewhere on the way. He blew his nose and smeared some ointment on the sore places beneath it. He did without a shave.

The look of the wardrobe puzzled him. Something had changed since yesterday. There seemed to be one jacket too many hanging there. That was impossible, though. Besides, he’d locked the front door. No one else had been here.

He was already standing on the doormat when something impelled him to go back inside. He stared at the hangers in the wardrobe but couldn’t put his finger on it.

*

The air was crystal-clear, the sky almost abnormally cloudless. Despite an occasional puff of wind, the dashboard in his car seemed to be melting. He lowered all the windows and half-heartedly pressed a few buttons on the radio. Nothing emerged but a hiss of static, sometimes louder, sometimes more subdued.

He found his father’s flat unchanged. The wall clock was ticking. The tumbler he’d drunk from was standing, half empty, on the table. The bedclothes were rumpled. When he looked out of the window he caught sight of the bicycle with the plastic cover on its saddle. The bottle was protruding from the dustbin. The motorbikes were in their places.

He was about to leave when he thought of the knife.

He didn’t have to search for long. His father kept his war souvenirs in the drawer beside the drinks cupboard. His Iron Crosses First and Second Class, his close-combat clasp, his wounded-in-action badge, his Eastern Campaign medal. Jonas knew them all. Often, as a child, he’d watched his father polishing them. An address book, his army paybook, some letters from comrades-in-arms. Three photos showing his father seated in some gloomy rooms with a group of fellow conscripts. The expression on his face was so unfamiliar Jonas couldn’t recall ever having seen him look like that. The knife was in there too. He took it.

*

His last visit to Schönbrunn Zoo had been a work outing — a cheerful occasion several years ago. He had a vague recollection of dirty cages and a café where they hadn’t been served.

Much had changed since then. The newspapers claimed that Schönbrunn was the finest zoo in Europe. It offered some new sensation every year. A pair of koalas, for example, or other exotic beasts that obliged every Viennese with still-impressionable young children to make a pilgrimage to the zoo. It had never occurred to Jonas to spend his Sundays gazing at the big cats’ enclosure or the insectarium. Now, because he wanted to discover whether the animals had vanished as well, he pulled up beside the ticket office and the metal bollards that denied access to cars.

He didn’t get out until he’d sounded his horn for a couple of minutes. He stuck the knife in his belt. He also took the wrench with him.

The gravel path crunched beneath his feet. It was a little cooler here than in the city centre. Wind was ruffling the trees that surrounded the zoo, but nothing was stirring inside the fence which, according to a noticeboard, enclosed the giraffe paddock.

His legs refused to carry him beyond a point from which he could still see his car. He couldn’t bring himself to turn off down one of the lateral paths. The car was his home, his insurance.

He swung round, gripping the wrench tightly, and stood there with his head down, listening.

Just wind.

The animals had gone.

He sprinted back to the car. No sooner was he behind the wheel than he locked the doors. Only then did he put the wrench and the knife on the passenger seat. He left the windows shut in spite of the heat.

*

He had often driven along the A1. An aunt of his lived in Salzburg, and he’d regularly visited Linz to inspect new ranges of furniture for the firm. The A1 was the motorway he liked least. He preferred the A2 because it led south, towards the sea. The traffic was lighter too.

Without taking his foot off the accelerator, he opened the glove compartment and emptied the contents onto the passenger seat. His sore throat had developed into an increasingly troublesome cold. His forehead was filmed with sweat and the glands in his neck were swollen. His nose was so blocked up he was breathing almost entirely through his mouth. Marie seldom went anywhere without some remedies for minor ailments, but she hadn’t left anything in the glove compartment.

The further he got from Vienna, the more often he turned on the radio. Once every frequency had been scanned, he’d turn it off again.

At Grossram service station his hopes were raised by the sight of several parked cars. He sounded his horn. Then he got out, carefully locking the car behind him, and went over to the restaurant entrance. The automatic door hummed open.

‘Hello?’

He hesitated. The restaurant stood in the shade of a clump of fir trees. Although the sun was shining, it might have been early evening in the dim interior.

‘Anyone there?’

The door closed. He jumped back so as not to be squashed and it opened again.

He fetched the knife from the car. He peered in all directions but could detect nothing unusual. It was just an ordinary motorway service area with cars parked in front of the restaurant and alongside the petrol pumps. People were the only missing feature. People and sounds.

The automatic door glided open again. Its hum, heard a thousand times, seemed suddenly like a message to his subconscious. He walked past the turnstile that separated the shop and cashier’s desk from the restaurant and stood among the tables with the knife clutched in his fist.

‘What’s going on here?’ he called, louder than was necessary.

The tables, rows of them covered with white tablecloths, were laid. The self-service counter, which would normally have held soups and sauces, baskets filled with rolls, small bowls of croutons and big bowls of salad, was completely bare.

He discovered the remains of a loaf in the kitchen dresser. It was stale but still edible. He improvised a snack with some sandwich spread from the fridge and ate on his feet, staring at the tiled floor. Back in the restaurant he brewed himself some coffee at the espresso machine. The first cup tasted bitter. The second tasted no better, and it wasn’t until he’d made a fourth that he placed the cup on the saucer.

He sat down on the terrace. It was scorching hot. He put up a parasol. The tables were just as unremarkable as those inside. Each had an ashtray, a list of ice creams, a menu card, salt and pepper shakers, toothpicks. They would have looked just the same had he come this way a few days ago.

He looked around him. Not a soul in sight.

After he had spent a while staring at the grey ribbon of the motorway it occurred to him that he’d sat here once before. With Marie. At the very same table, in fact. He recognised it from its position, which gave him a view of a small, secluded vegetable garden. They’d been on their way to their holiday resort in France. They’d breakfasted here.

He jumped up. Perhaps there was something wrong with the phones in Vienna. Perhaps he could call someone from here.

He found a phone at the cash desk. By now he knew the number of Marie’s sister in England by heart. The same unfamiliar ringing tone.

No one in Vienna answered either. Not Werner, not the office, not his father.

He took a dozen postcards from a stand. He found some stamps in a folder in a drawer beneath the cash register. He wrote his own address on a card.

The message ran: Grossram service area, 6 July.

He stuck a stamp on. There was a postbox beside the entrance. A little notice stated that it was emptied at 3 p.m. No mention of the days of the week, but he posted the card anyway. He took the rest of the cards and the stamps with him.

He was about to unlock his car when he noticed a sports car parked nearby. He went over to it. No ignition key, of course.

*

Jonas left the motorway at the next exit and pulled up outside the first house in the first village he came to. He rang the bell and knocked.

‘Hello? Hello!’

The door wasn’t locked.

‘Anyone there? Hey? Hello!’

He checked all the rooms. Not a living soul. No dog, no canary, not even a fly.

He drove through the village, sounding his horn until he could stand the din no longer. Then he searched the local pub. Nothing.

All the villages he passed in the next couple of hours were off the beaten track. The few houses they consisted of were so dilapidated he wondered if anyone had been living there at all. No chemist’s anywhere, let alone a car showroom. He regretted not having left the motorway near some sizeable town. He was lost, from the look of it.

He pulled up on the right, out of habit. It was a while before he found his position on the map. He’d strayed off into the Dunkelstein Forest. It was over twenty minutes’ drive to the next motorway access road. He itched to get to it and put on speed again, but he was too tired now.

In the next village, which at least had a grocery store, he made for the most expensive-looking house. It was locked, but the remaining half of his wrench came in useful once more. He smashed a window and climbed in.

In the kitchen he found a packet of aspirin. While one of them was noisily dissolving in a glass of water, he combed the house. It was well furnished in dark wood. Some of the pieces he recognised. They belonged to the Swedish 99 Series, with which he himself had done good business for an entire season. Antlers hung on the walls. The floor was covered in the kind of thick carpets known at the office as ‘bug rugs’. None of the decor was cheap, but none of it was tasteful either. Children’s toys were lying around.

He returned to the kitchen and downed his aspirin.

Back in the living room he shut his eyes and listened. From the kitchen came the muffled ticking of a clock. Soot dislodged from cracks by the wind came rattling down the chimney. There was a smell of dust, timber and damp cloth.

The stairs creaked underfoot. The bedrooms were on the first floor. The first was obviously a child’s. Behind the second door he found a double bed.

He hesitated, but his eyelids were drooping with fatigue. On a sudden impulse, he undressed completely. He drew the dark, heavy curtains and turned on the bedside light, which cast a faint glow. Having satisfied himself that the door was locked, he lay down on the bed. The sheet was soft, the duvet cover of exceptionally fine cotton. Under other circumstances he would have felt good.

He turned out the light.

An alarm clock was ticking almost inaudibly on the bedside table. The pillow smelt of a person Jonas had never met. Wind whistled in the roof space overhead. The sound of the alarm clock was strangely homely.

Darkness engulfed him.

*

He was feeling less muzzy than before. Sitting up, he caught sight of some gilt-framed photos on the chest of drawers. With a handkerchief clamped to his streaming nose, he tottered over to them like a sleepwalker.

One showed a woman of about forty. Although she wasn’t smiling, there was a hint of gaiety in her eyes. She didn’t look the kind of person who lived in a house like this one.

He wondered what she did for a living. Was she a secretary, or did she own a boutique in one of the larger towns nearby?

The next photo was of a man. Her husband? A bit older, with a greying moustache and dark, piercing eyes. He looked like someone who spent all day driving around on business in a 4WD.

Two fair-haired children. One eight or nine, the other only a few months old. Neither looked particularly bright.

*

The woman’s image stayed with him all the way to the motorway. Sporadic thoughts about the house recurred even while he was twiddling the knobs of the radio shortly before Linz. Then he forced himself to concentrate so he didn’t overshoot the exit.

He made out the huge factory chimneys from far away. No smoke was rising from them.

He drove into the city without observing the speed limit. He hoped a policeman would stop him, but he quickly realised that something was wrong here too.

There were no pedestrians.

The shops flanking the street were deserted.

Traffic lights turned red, but he waited in vain for other cars to cross his route.

He sounded his horn, gunned the engine and slammed on the brakes. His tyres screamed, sending up a stench of burning rubber. He sounded his horn again: three short, three long, three short. He drove along the same stretch several times. Not a door opened, not a car came his way. The air smelt less unpleasant than it had on his last visit, but it was thundery.

When he pulled up at a chemist’s and got out, he wondered why it felt so exceptionally cold. Having suffered from the heat for weeks, he was now shivering. However, this probably owed more to his cold than to the gathering storm.

He smashed the plate glass door of the chemist’s and took a packet of aspirin and some throat pastilles from one of the shelves. On the way out he noticed some echinacea and pocketed a small bottle.

It didn’t take him long to find a pub whose door was unlocked. He called. There was no response, but he hadn’t expected one.

He noticed nothing out of the ordinary in the bar, which reeked of stale tobacco smoke and rancid fat.

He called again.

In the kitchen he put a saucepan of water on the stove and tossed a handful of potatoes into it. He killed time in the bar with a newspaper dated 3 July. People had still been here that day: gravy stains and breadcrumbs on the pages showed that. The newspaper itself was just as unremarkable as those he’d read at the station the day before. Nothing pointed to an event of exceptional magnitude.

He went outside. The first flashes of lightning could be seen. The wind was getting up. Empty cigarette packets and other bits of rubbish went skittering across the street. He tilted his head back and massaged his shoulders, which were stiff after his drive. Black clouds were massing in the sky. A distant rumble. Another flash of lightning. And another.

He was about to go back inside when a crash rang out directly overhead. Without looking round he ran to the car and locked himself in. He withdrew the knife from its sheath. Waited for a few minutes. The windscreen misted over.

He lowered the driver’s window.

‘What do you want?’ he yelled.

Another crash, fainter than before, followed at once by yet another.

‘Come out of there!’

Heavy raindrops came pelting down on the bonnet, on the roadway. More rumbling.

He looked up as he ran back to the entrance through the rain, but his view was obstructed by trees. He dashed into the bar, opened the door to the stairs and pounded up them, knife in hand. On the first floor was a long, narrow passage almost devoid of light from outside. He failed to find the switch in his haste.

He came to a door. It wasn’t shut. The wind kept banging it against the jamb with monotonous regularity. He pushed it wide open with the knife held out in front of him.

The room was completely bare. There wasn’t even any furniture in it. The big casement window was flapping in the wind.

He turned on the spot a couple of times, knife at the ready, then walked to the window. He looked out, glanced back over his shoulder at the room, looked out again. The window was above the entrance and a little to one side.

Just as he withdrew his head a gust of wind blew into the room. The window banged against his arm. He shut it and went downstairs again, still with the knife in his hand.

In the bar he subsided onto a bench. It was a while before his rapid, shallow breathing steadied. He sat staring at the wooden panelling until he remembered the potatoes.

*

The thunderstorm ended just as he laid his knife and fork aside. He left the plate on the table and returned to his car, leaping over muddy puddles on the way.

He drove to the station.

The booking hall and the long, gloomy passage from which flights of steps led to the platforms were as deserted as the forecourt and the platforms themselves. He smashed the window of a kiosk and took a can of lemonade, which he drank at once, dropping the empty can in a litter bin.

He found a postbox on the forecourt. Linz Station, 6 July, he wrote on a postcard. After a moment’s thought he addressed it to his father.

*

Although Jonas had passed a number of car showrooms, he had something better in mind than an Opel or a Ford. No good opportunity to exchange his rattletrap of a Toyota presented itself until he reached the outskirts of the city, where he at last spotted a dealer offering more than just family saloons.

Jonas was no petrolhead. He’d never gone in for fast cars, but it now seemed absurd to restrict his speed to 160 k.p.h. That meant saying goodbye to his old car. It had cost more than it was worth and held no sentimental associations.

To his surprise, his wrench made no impression on the showroom window behind which the cars awaited their purchasers. He’d never had to deal with safety glass before. He rammed it with the Toyota instead. There was a crash, and splinters came raining down on the bonnet. He backed out again. The hole in the glass was big enough.

He chose a red Alfa Spider. He found the keys on a hook behind the sales desk. It proved harder to locate the key to the only vehicular exit, a pair of big double doors, but he eventually found that too. He went back to the Toyota and cleared out all his belongings.

Before getting in he turned and waved his old car goodbye. He felt foolish a moment later.

A hundred metres from the car showroom he stopped at a service station. The petrol pump worked without any problem. He filled the tank.

On the way to Salzburg he tested the Spider’s potential. The acceleration pressed him back into his seat. He put out his hand, meaning to try the radio, but none had been installed. He reached instead for the throat pastilles on the passenger seat.

*

Lying beside the road beyond Wels, as though someone had thrown it away, was a guitar case.

Jonas backed up. He threw stones at the case from a few feet away. He hit it but nothing happened. He kicked it. Eventually he opened it. There was an electric guitar inside. Water had seeped into the case. It had evidently rained hard here too.

He walked around for a while. The grass soaked his trouser legs to the knee. He was near the motorway access road. This spot was probably frequented by hitchhikers, so he shouted and vigorously sounded his horn. He came across discarded beer cans, cigarette ends, condoms. The sodden earth squelched beneath his shoes.

He leant against the passenger door.

Anything might or might not be significant. Perhaps that guitar case had fallen off the roof of a car. Perhaps it had belonged to some person who had vanished at this spot. However and whyever they’d vanished.

*

The sun was going down behind the castle as he passed Salzburg station. He drove across the station square, sounding his horn, then headed for his aunt’s flat in Parsch. It took him some time to find the way. He sounded his horn when he finally got to Apothekerhofstrasse. When there was no response he got in again. It was unlikely that he would find anything informative at his aunt’s place, so he saved himself the trouble of breaking down the door.

He drove across the border to Freilassing.

No one there.

*

No one.

*

Almost unable to believe it, Jonas drove round the village for an hour. He had secretly assumed that he would come across some human activity on German soil. He’d expected to see soldiers. Possibly tents and refugees — even, perhaps, tanks or people in protective clothing. Civilisation, anyway.

He turned off the engine. Staring at the sign that indicated the route to the motorway for Munich, he drummed on the steering wheel with his fingertips.

How far should he drive?

Using his mobile, he dialled the number of a furniture manufacturer based near Cologne. The phone rang three times, four, five. An answerphone cut in.

*

It was dark by the time he parked in front of Salzburg’s Marriott Hotel. He tossed the wrench into his bag and stuck the knife in his belt. Locking the car, he peered in all directions and listened. Not a sound. There had to be some flowering shrubs nearby. He could smell their scent but didn’t recognise it.

He stumbled through the revolving door and into the lobby. It was so dark inside he caught his foot in the thick carpet and knocked over an ashtray on a stand.

A shaded lamp was burning on the reception desk. He put his bag down, drew the knife and peered round the gloomy lobby. Without looking, he groped for the main light switch with his free hand.

He blinked.

Once his eyes got used to the light he noticed the stereo system housed in a cabinet beside a wide-screen TV. An empty CD sleeve was lying on the deck. Mozart, of course. He pressed play. It was a while before the first notes rang out.

He took a closer look at the stereo. It was a more expensive system than he himself could ever have afforded, complete with every conceivable extra. The CDs were automatically cleaned. There was also a repeat button. He pressed it and turned up the volume until it made him wince.

He wrote on a slip of paper: Someone’s here. 6 July. He secured it in a conspicuous position beside the entrance, then wedged the side door open with an armchair so the music could be heard in the street.

He took a random assortment of keys from behind the reception desk, feeling as if the loudspeakers’ output would flatten him at any moment. He had never heard anything like it from an ordinary home stereo rig. His heart thudded as if he’d been running, and he felt slightly sick. He was glad when a dozen keys and their tags were jingling in his pocket and he could escape the din.

Using the stairs because he didn’t trust the lift, he found a place to sleep on the top floor. It was a suite of three interconnecting rooms and a spacious tiled bathroom with underfloor heating. The music from the lobby was inaudible with the door shut. If he opened it, however, he could tell when the various sections of the orchestra came in.

He locked himself in and ran a bath.

While waiting for the bathtub to fill he turned on the TV. He dialled Marie’s mobile again and again, and tried her sister’s number for the hundredth time.

He toured the suite, his feet sinking into its oriental carpets. The floorboards beneath them creaked faintly. Once, he probably wouldn’t have noticed this, but the unnatural silence of recent days had honed his hearing to such an extent that the slightest sound made him jump.

A bottle of champagne was chilling in the minibar. Although it didn’t seem appropriate, he stretched out in the tub with a glass in his hand. He took a sip and shut his eyes. There was a smell of bath salts and essential oils. Foam hissed and crackled around him.

*

Next morning he found his shoes not only one on top of the other but face to face. It reminded him of the way Marie sometimes arranged their mobiles: as if exchanging an armless embrace.

Jonas felt pretty sure he hadn’t left his shoes like that.

He checked the door. Securely locked.

He regretted not having taken some bread or rolls from the deep-freeze in the hotel kitchen the night before. He found a couple of kiwi fruits. He scooped out their flesh and ate it as he stood by the fruit shelf in the kitchen.

The stereo system was still blasting out through the entire building. Wincing, he hurried to reception. He scribbled his name and mobile number on a slip of paper, together with a request that anyone who found it should call him. This he stuck to the reception desk. Before leaving the hotel he stocked up with paper and sticky tape.

Salzburg, Marriott, 7 July, he wrote on the postcard he dropped in the letterbox outside.

*

At midday he drove through deserted Villach, at half past he sounded his horn in front of Klagenfurt’s celebrated Dragon Statue. In both places he wrote postcards and left slips of paper bearing his phone number. He didn’t stop to search any buildings.

Several times he pulled up in the middle of large squares where he could get out and stretch his legs in safety, without having to watch his back. He called out. Listened. Stared at the ground.

Thanks to his powerful car and the fact that he didn’t have to worry about oncoming traffic, he crossed the Loibl Pass and reached the frontier within a few minutes. The frontier post was deserted, the barrier raised.

He searched the offices and dialled some numbers stored in their phones. Nobody answered. He left a message there too and did the same at the Slovenian frontier post a few hundred metres further on. He filled his tank, stocked up with mineral water and sausage, swallowed an aspirin.

It took him less than half an hour to cover the eighty kilometres to Ljubljana. The place was deserted. So were Domzale, Celje, Slovenska Bistrica and Maribor.

He left messages in English and German everywhere. Posted cards with Slovenian stamps on them. Dialled stored numbers at service stations. Tried the internal communications network at toll gates. Set off alarms and waited a minute or two. Left business cards behind because he’d run out of notepaper from the Marriott.

Just short of the Slovenian — Hungarian border he passed an overturned truck. He braked so sharply he almost lost control of the car. The cab of the truck had come to rest on its side. He had to clamber on top to open the driver’s door. The cab was empty.

He examined the nearby area. Skid marks could be seen. The crash barrier was damaged and part of the load — building materials — was lying in the ditch. Everything pointed to a normal accident.

*

Jonas didn’t find a soul in Hungary either.

He drove to Zalaegerszeg. From there he took the expressway to Austria and crossed the frontier at Heiligenkreuz. Absurdly, he felt he was back home.