by Marc Raabe
Gabriel just listens to the noise.
‘I know that you know what I did. Of course, he told you. But do you know why I did it?’ He goes quiet for a provokingly long time. ‘I did it for you,’ Val finally whispers. ‘It was revenge. Revenge for what they did to your girl. They hurt her. Your girl. And I wanted her to be perfect for me!’
‘You had Liz already, right?’ Gabriel asks. ‘You had her already – and then those two suddenly showed up and got in the way.’
‘Yes, it was ugly. The two were so brutal. And I was so stupid and a bit of a coward. I didn’t want them to see me, so I hid in the bushes. I should have just stayed and not left her alone. I hated those boys for it, making me feel so stupid and cowardly . . .’ Val groans as if the memory still haunts him. ‘But now I feel better again.’
‘Because you slit his throat . . .’ Gabriel mutters.
‘Oh no! No, no. That is not the most important thing. I saved her and punished him. But most of all, I got to see him die. Every moment of his pathetic, shitty, unworthy life flowing out of him. I looked in his eyes until the very last second. And he saw that I saw. The last thing he witnessed was my joy at his death. That, you see, that is revenge.’
‘And Verena Schuster, the other boy’s mother? Why her?’
Val is silent for a moment and then says, ‘Ultimately, I did that for you, too.’
‘For me?’
‘Oh, yes. I wanted to help you.’
‘That . . . that’s mad,’ Gabriel says, horrified.
‘Mad? I see everything clearly. The mad ones aren’t the problem, you know. It’s the normal ones. You of all people should know that. And yet, still you act as if you’re one of them, one of the normal ones.’
Gabriel’s hand grips the telephone. Snapshots flicker in his worn-out brain. Straitjacket, straps, Dressler’s face . . .
Val whispers, ‘I’m the one showing you the way, so you can find your way back. At some point, we all have to go back to where we began.’
‘What good is that?’ Gabriel asks. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘I want you to remember and to understand what you’ve done. I want you to remember it every day and every night.’
‘Then leave Liz out of it. She has nothing to do with this.’
‘How touching!’ Val snorts. His voice suddenly changes and becomes sharp and aggressive. ‘Do you actually hear yourself talking? Do you really believe in this film hero shit? Do you think that you’re going to accomplish anything with someone like me that way? You must know that you’re not getting through to me with this noble bullshit. It’s a good thing that she has nothing to do with it. All the better for you to remember!’
‘At the moment, I remember absolutely nothing. And if you want to insist that I remember, then just bloody tell me what happened that night and maybe I’ll finally understand what you want from me.’
‘Oh, no! I won’t make it that easy for you. You will have to torture yourself even more if you want to see your girl again.’
‘You know what?’ Gabriel blurts out. ‘You live in a sick world. And who knows, maybe you have no idea at all what really happened on that night. I don’t understand what you want. You’re holding me responsible for something that happened to you. Good. Understood! But as long as you come at me with all this vague hinting shit, nothing will make any sense . . .’
There is a heavy silence on the line.
‘Don’t you believe me?’ Val asks.
Gabriel immediately regrets what he said. Maybe he went too far and put Liz in danger.
‘All right,’ Val finally says. His voice suddenly sounds deliberately calm. ‘Do you remember your pyjamas? With Luke Skywalker on the chest?’
The pyjamas. He remembers the pyjamas.
So what? You wore the damned things often enough.
‘On the hem of your pyjama top,’ Val continues, ‘you had a bloody handprint. You clung to it when you went into the cellar.’
That can’t be. He can’t know that.
Oh god. He was there.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Gabriel whispers breathlessly.
No answer.
‘What do you know?’ Gabriel’s voice trembles. ‘Hello?’
‘Carpe Noctem,’ Val says.
Then the connection breaks off.
Chapter 33
Berlin – 19 September, 4.25 p.m.
Val’s call pushed Gabriel over the edge. He hadn’t realised he was standing so close to the abyss. And now he was in a free fall.
The effect was shocking, like an overdose of cocaine. His heart raced as quickly as his thoughts. Again and again, violent trembling ran through him, as if he had a fever and his overwrought body were crying out for sleep.
He marshalled his last reserves like a drug addict on the hunt for one more hit and bought a packet of sleeping pills.
Then he slept like the dead.
When he awoke, he was wearing the pyjamas. He wondered why they still fit him. Luke Skywalker hung loosely over his eleven-year-old chest, as flames climbed into the blood-red night sky. The house was ablaze, but he knew that it was no use to keep waiting. He had to go in. Barefoot, he ran across the scorching pavement, the fingers of his right hand clutching the hem of his pyjama top.
The front door was open, its frame entirely in flames, and just behind it was the cellar stairs. He climbed down, step by step, amidst the scorching heat. The walls whipped red tongues of fire at him and the stairs seemed endless, even after a thousand steps. He looked around and was shocked to see that the front door was still right behind him. Now there was a fireman standing in the doorway – or was it a police officer? – offering him a hand. He recognised the police officer’s face, but he didn’t want to take his hand and instead slapped it away, ran further down the never-ending stairs and fell with a crash. When he got up, he was suddenly in the lab and started to panic. No one was allowed to know about Dad’s lab. Not even the police!
All of a sudden, the dream ends, like a rubber band that has been stretched too far and then snapped. Gabriel sits up, bathed in sweat.
It is 4.27 p.m. He has slept for almost sixteen hours. His legs are like jelly, but they carried him. He stares at the strange man in the mirror and tries his best to wash him away with cold water.
What was that last thing Val said? Carpe noctem? It didn’t make the least bit of sense.
He tries to slowly organise the chaos in his head. The fact that Val had mentioned the Luke Skywalker pyjamas was terrifying. The pyjamas were the only things that he and David could save from their former life. The bloodstain on the hem was a mark left behind by the horror of that night. And even if Gabriel had no recollection at all about when and how it had got there, at least he knew that it had not been there before.
Val’s voice echoed in his thoughts. On the hem of your pyjama top, you had a bloody handprint. You clung to it when you went into the cellar.
The cellar. So, he had not only dreamt it, but actually had gone down into the cellar that night. And the lab? Had he also been there? Was it about something in the lab? And what had Val been looking for there? How had he even got into the house? And why did he – Gabriel – have blood on his hand? Was it even his own blood that had stained his pyjamas?
In the children’s home, it took numerous washes to get the bloody handprint out of the fabric and, in turn, the image of Luke had faded. But, despite the washed-out colours and their connection to his terrible experience, the Luke Skywalker pyjamas were his only souvenir of his previous life and he clung to them like a treasure. And Gabriel knew that David, who had the same pyjamas, had done exactly the same.
Did David still have his pyjamas after all this time?
The thought of his brother stung. That night should have bound them together, but instead it tore them apart.
For the first time in his life, he’d wished that he hadn’t locked David in his room. Maybe then his brother would have been able to tell him what happene
d on that night. Even today, he thinks, I still don’t know what he heard up there and what he didn’t.
Would it help to ask him?
Gabriel threw on his clothes, black jeans, a dark jumper and a plain black leather jacket, along with a cap to hide his face.
He had nothing left to lose, and David was his last hope of getting any information to jog his memory.
So, he left Caesar’s and walked to David’s flat. He’d left the Chrysler on a distant side street just after Jonas’s death, just in case the kiosk owner remembered the van and saw them together.
Now that he’s standing in front of David’s door, Gabriel is no longer sure whether it is a good idea to ask his brother. He looks around in all directions and then presses the buzzer. This time, the button isn’t cool metal, but warm from the midday sun.
He won’t be there, Luke. He’s never there when you need him.
Gabriel wants to disagree, but then he hears the crackling intercom. ‘Hello?’
‘Hey, it’s me, Gabriel.’
Silence.
‘David?’
‘Are you insane? The police were here. They’re looking for you.’
‘I know,’ Gabriel says. ‘But they’re gone now, right?’
Again, silence. Then the buzzer. ‘Come up.’
Gabriel takes the lift. Once more, he finds the cleanliness of David’s building striking. David is already standing in the doorway, thin, pale, green-eyed.
And now?
‘Can I come in?’
David looks him over and then nods. Somehow, he seems uneasy.
‘You look like shit,’ David says.
‘That’s how I feel, too.’
‘Are you on something?’
Gabriel shakes his head. ‘No. Just a couple of sleeping pills.’
David says nothing.
‘Listen,’ Gabriel begins cautiously.
‘I don’t want to know anything,’ David interrupts. ‘I don’t want to know anything about all your shit. Just leave me alone, OK?’
‘OK,’ Gabriel says. ‘I don’t mean to annoy you, or convince you of some story that you would never believe from me anyway. I don’t want you getting involved in any way. Things are already complicated enough between us . . .’
Gabriel looks at David, whose green eyes are strangely indifferent. He is suspicious, guarded, but there is also something else, something he can’t put his finger on.
‘I need to know something. I . . .’ Gabriel stops and tries to find the right words for something that has no right words. ‘You know that I can’t remember . . . that night.’
David nods coolly. ‘Or at least you always blocked it.’
‘I really don’t know, David. I simply can’t remember. But now I need to know, you understand?’
David looks at him, surprised. Apparently he’d thought of every possible scenario except for this. ‘What do you mean? Why?’
‘Don’t ask. It is what it is. I need to know.’
David laughs bitterly. His cheeks go red with anger and he’s visibly fighting to maintain composure. ‘My god,’ he finally exclaims. ‘You’re silent for thirty years. You answer nothing, not one of my questions and you leave me to think you’re dead. And now, all of a sudden you want to know what happened?’ David shakes his head. ‘Honestly, I can’t believe it! I was the one locked up in my room. I didn’t hear anything. And now you’re asking me what happened? Again, what about my bloody questions?’
‘You never asked.’
‘Like hell,’ David replies, ‘you always just shut down. I had a thousand questions!’
‘Then why didn’t you ever ask them?’
‘I thought, I . . .’ David stops and looks for the words. ‘Oh, fuck it!’ he finally blurts out. ‘Why do you think? I was scared. You were always so . . . I don’t even know what to say. I was a child, damn it. And you were my big brother, you understand? I had no father, no mother and I was so scared of losing you, too. So, when you always shut down like that, I thought, just leave him alone . . . You always looked like you were about to fly into a fit of rage – or have some sort of permanent psychological trauma. Usually, I was just scared you’d have a breakdown.’
Gabriel stares at him in disbelief. David had tried to take care of him? ‘You . . . you never told me that.’
‘Of course not. How could I? You were completely gone, lost in some film that I couldn’t watch. You couldn’t be stopped on your trip . . .’
‘I was protecting you, the whole time you –’
‘No, damn it,’ David says. Tears glisten in his eyes. ‘You were preoccupied with yourself. It had nothing to do with me, it was always about you. With every fight you started, every time you jumped in for me . . . it was about you. I never asked for that . . . I hated it.’
Gabriel swallows the growing anger and the shame. His head is pounding. ‘Nonsense. Maybe you were too little to remember . . . What about that time with the boys that messed with you at the Elisabethstift? Do you really want to say you could’ve managed that alone? Or the nun, who –’
‘Oh, please!’ David rolls his eyes. ‘Why do you think they picked on me . . . it wasn’t about me. They were just too chicken to go after you. Most of the trouble I had was because of you . . .’
Gabriel stares at him, dumbfounded. Trouble, because of me? The countless times he’d saved his little brother’s skin because he didn’t want to fight and . . .
It doesn’t matter! Pull yourself together!
‘OK,’ Gabriel says, straining for calm. ‘Anyway. Believe me, David. Even if you had asked me about that night, I really can’t remember anything. I couldn’t have told you anything, nothing at all, you understand? That night . . . there’s nothing, it’s like . . . a blind spot.’
David looks at him incredulously. ‘And in the hospital? You were in a psychiatric hospital. There were professionals, doctors, psychologists. With everything they did to you, you couldn’t remember anything?’
‘They locked me up and pumped me full of psychotropic drugs. That is pretty much the only thing that I can remember.’
David looks at the floor in silence. His eyes are focused on some point on the other side of the floor. Finally, he sighs. ‘I still don’t know why you locked me in the bedroom that night. Damned if I know what happened.’
‘What did you hear up there?’
‘I heard noise, it woke me up. Dad screamed something and then there was a bang. At first, I didn’t realise that it was a gunshot. I pressed my ear up to the door, but heard almost nothing.’
‘Almost nothing?’
‘Something clattered just after the shot. It was quiet for a moment, and then there was another and another, and I realised that they were gunshots. I was terrified and crawled under the bed. After a while, it smelled of smoke, so I pounded on the door and yelled. Then you came and opened the door. You looked as if you’d actually seen the devil. I shouted at you and wanted to know what happened. You didn’t say a single word. You just grabbed me by the arm and pulled me down the stairs. And then I saw the two of them lying there. It was . . .’
‘Describe for me what you saw,’ Gabriel says quietly.
David’s face is grey and the wrinkles around his mouth look like sharply drawn hooks. ‘Dad was lying on his back, a bullet had hit him in the side of the stomach. Another shot had hit him in the chest, probably in his heart. There was fresh blood all around him.’ David clears his throat, stands up, and turns his back to Gabriel. He goes to the window and looks out over the rooftops of Berlin. ‘She . . . she took a bullet right . . . right in the head, in her right eye.’
‘Can you remember anything else?’
David shakes his head.
Gabriel hangs on David’s every word, absorbing every detail and waiting for a spark to ignite his memory. But nothing happens. ‘How long were we standing there?’
‘No time. You pulled me out of there right away.
I saw them for maybe two or three seconds,’ David says with a broken voice. ‘Strange. Whenever I think about it, I see everything in front of me, like a photo where I can look at every detail, even the newspaper on the coffee table. I don’t remember what was on it any more. I still couldn’t read so well at the time, I guess maybe that’s why.’
‘And when did the fire start?’
‘It was burning the whole time. As I said, I smelled smoke up in our room. It was worse downstairs. Smoke was billowing out of the cellar. I coughed like mad. I think that without you I would’ve stayed there and suffocated. I was so . . . I couldn’t leave them. I was paralysed. It looked horrible, like a battlefield, but the whole time I had to –’
The mobile in Gabriel’s jacket rings. ‘Sorry.’ He quickly pulls out the phone and his hotel key falls to the floor in the process.
Gabriel stares at the display. Jens Florband. One of Liz’s acquaintances or work contacts. He quickly presses the red button, puts the mobile and the key back in his pocket and looks at David. ‘Can you not remember anything else, like maybe the way from upstairs to the ground floor?’
David shakes his head. He is pale and agitated. Gabriel looks away at the floor. ‘And – do you know if someone else was in the house?’
‘Someone else?’ David asks, bewildered. ‘Why?’
Gabriel shrugs.
‘No. There was no one,’ David says.
‘Did we go back down to the cellar, can you remember that?’ Gabriel asks.
‘To the cellar? No. Certainly not – but, wait a minute, there was something strange.’
Gabriel lifts his head and looks at David.
‘When we went outside, we had to pass the cellar door. You pulled it shut – I think to keep more smoke from getting upstairs. For a moment I thought there was a sort of knocking and something that sounded like . . . like screaming.’
Goosebumps form across Gabriel’s neck. That’s it! There was someone else there.
‘I almost forgot,’ David says, ‘it was just for a moment. I wasn’t even sure it actually happened. And then the fire and . . . I was totally confused. Maybe someone outside had seen the fire and started screaming.’