The Liquid Land

by Raphaela Edelbauer

  ‘If you please,’ the Countess said. ‘You’re positively crashing around.’ As always when she criticised the least essential aspect of my behaviour, my face flushed with shame.

  ‘I have something I’d like to discuss with you,’ I said as I entered, and pointed, as if as proof, at a pile of papers, which I only then identified as the wrong ones. It was a shopping list of delicacies for the next salon, and I quickly let my hand fall.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you about two discrepancies that have preoccupied me for a long time,’ I said, feeling rage in my solar plexus. ‘It’s about the number of concentration camp prisoners and their whereabouts.’

  As if I’d said something of interest, yet at the same time strange, the Countess got up from her desk and came closer, all the time locked in on me.

  ‘Here,’ I said, pulling out a piece of paper. ‘On Easter Monday 1945, eight hundred people were murdered and buried, and one thousand two hundred further people died on a death march. But only thirty-four were found and taken into account during the trials.’

  ‘Wait a moment. It’s a little noisy in here, don’t you think?’ the Countess said, and made a show of bringing out a small glass bearing the Melk monastery coat of arms from one of her desk drawers.

  ‘And here,’ I said, ‘is a document that states another aeroplane fuselage left the factory four days later — after it had been supposedly evacuated. The question is what happened to the prisoners, and I thought’ — heat rose to my head — ‘that you ought to know, because the mine belonged to your father.’ The Countess was calmly polishing the little glass with a cloth, as if it was an important piece of evidence in the subject being discussed, then she filled it to the brim with pine-cone schnapps. Time and Eternity, I read beneath the naked angel printed on it.

  ‘In any case,’ I said firmly, ‘before I continue researching the filling agent, I would like to have certain things cleared up. I’ve been working for you for over a year, and I have a moral obligation to investigate. The measurement results don’t match the official data. I would like to undertake a local inspection, in the structures, in the passageways, in short’ — I coughed from speaking too quickly — ‘in the hole.’ Then we were both silent.

  ‘Listen,’ the Countess said finally, but so quietly that it was difficult to understand her. ‘I have no idea what you’re trying to achieve here. You haven’t actually asked anything thus far, so how is one supposed to give an answer?’ She raised the glass and emptied it in one. The light from the chandelier shimmered on her tilted-back forehead.

  ‘I can only say so much about it. First of all, they were chaotic times, terrible times, of course, but above all, times in which no documents were prepared. Well, then it’s just word against word, nothing can be done. Next topic.’

  Nothing had been answered, and my anger at this disrespect spurred me on.

  ‘I must insist,’ I began shakily, ‘because I have done a lot of research into the town and its ownership structure over the past few months, and I believe that my parents were pursuing exactly the same questions as I am. May I ask whether they had discussed anything like this with you?’

  ‘What bound me and your parents was friendship.’ Without asking, the Countess had pushed a second glass of schnapps across the desk.

  ‘Why did the adjoining property to my house, the one belonging to my paternal grandparents, transfer into your possession?’ Growing more courageous, I continued. ‘This is a general query. Around 1930, most people still owned their own property themselves. How did Greater Einland become one single address?’

  ‘What a stupid question. Each had their own reason, a different story. How can one respond to such a simplification?’ She refilled her glass.

  ‘I just noticed that —’ She cut me off.

  ‘What my family has invested in this town is immeasurable. You are slandering that which is dearest to us and from which you, young lady, benefit, namely from the effort of rebuilding it. Nonsense! Ungrateful talk.’

  ‘No, I’m not slandering anything,’ I said, but the Countess seemed to no longer be able to hear me.

  ‘Or perhaps you’re delusional from your drugs? Did you think the pharmacist wouldn’t tell me about your little addiction? Who do you think he orders your oxycodone from?’ For a moment, there was silence.

  ‘I have an illness, I —’ I whispered.

  ‘Your parents talked about this problem and that for the last few years they could hardly talk to you. I can’t blame them.’

  ‘How dare you use my own parents against me?’

  ‘Well, if you already have your answers!’ she suddenly screamed. I was so close to her that her heavy-sweet perfume went up my nose as if it were a personal matter.

  ‘Listen. You’ve come to me in order to have your own, long-held ideas approved. You have no idea of the complexity of the matter. And I’ll ask you something: has anyone ever prevented you from finding out about it? Or did you just want to take the comfortable route? Get everything given to you?’

  She started walking around the study. ‘You don’t want to know at all,’ she said, pointing at my face. ‘And to create a judgement based on this hodgepodge of trivialities in your mountain of papers, you fantasist, is a mistake. You must have noticed that everything is layered on top of each other? One can’t simply fill two needs with one deed. Of course I know answers. Answers, answers.’ She waved her hand through the air. ‘But that won’t satisfy you. It wouldn’t be the exciting story that you so want. Do you think it wasn’t brought to my attention that you’ve been sneaking confidential documents home with you? Not everything in life is black and white. Some people have to make decisions.’

  She sat back down at the table as if deep in thought. I was delirious. ‘You’re wallowing in yesterday’s news, while turning away from the problems we face today. Egoism! Typical of this generation.’ Her words sounded almost scornful, like a provocation: ‘But you see: if it’s really so important to you, then no one will stop you. Just go to the old water tower under the Perger Platz and take a look for yourself. Then you’ll certainly see if something’s there. But you won’t do it,’ and she accompanied this closing flourish with a dismissive hand gesture. ‘You are interested in something completely different. You are obsessed with your parents and their affairs. I’ll tell you something you don’t want to hear: your parents had a completely different set of goals from you — they were decent people. Whatever you suspect, your parents and I were on completely the same wavelength.’ I wanted to respond, but I was stunned. ‘Now, if you don’t mind. I have to work — the salon’s tomorrow.’ And with that she sat back down at her desk and looked at her documents. As I went back to my office to get my coat, I saw, for a second time, a potted plant being flung upwards from the terrace below.

  It was precisely this rubber plant, carried by an almost tornado-like vortex, that later landed on a car not far from the church where the workers noticed its crash landing. At exactly this time, they had eaten their dinner at the tower, three Leberkäse rolls each, and begun their night shift. But for a moment they leaned out of the cladding to watch the lanterns: some of them thought of their own children at home, others simply liked the spectacle — the way the mighty monstrance was carried out of the church.

  The middle-school children, who were finally all there, made to set off, even though many of the parents had insisted it should be postponed due to the rain. The priest said no. As a result, there was a certain irritation among the participants: no one wanted to have sick children lying at home the next day. But they couldn’t spoil the event for them either, and so the grumbling procession was put in motion, led by the Reverend and six altar boys. The gusts billowed mightily between the houses, which were gradually turning on their lights. The various layers of air of the storm carried the St Martin’s song and I go with my lantern in every direction, making certain frequencies whiz as if swooping
downtown and snatching others right from the mouths of the children. A dishevelled melody lay over the town at six o’clock, and because it was so frayed, people everywhere were wondering what kind of sound it was — what strange soundscape of children’s voices and yowling weather was skimming around the house. Sister Elfriede, who was making her soup deliveries to the elderly townspeople, later said that it had sounded like a wrecked record, because the children were packed into plastic raincoats like shrink-wrapped vegetables. Impossible for the sounds to escape from the plastic bags: she had been surprised the students could even breathe.

  The workers hanging from the scaffolding stopped their work for a moment and directed their headtorches towards the street to watch the brightly coloured children’s train disappearing. Increasingly larger raindrops made it difficult to work on the facade, which is why the foreman ordered them to concentrate on the erosion for the next few hours.

  I had, while all this was happening, slipped on my rubber boots at home and fetched a boltcutter from the garage, which I stowed with a torch in my dry bag, before I set off. At the Johannesgasse/Brunnengasse intersection, I came across the crowd of singers, who were turning into the East Town singing, and I walked downhill past the white horse that had been parked in a side street for the show taking place later on. I paid no attention to the expectant children’s laughter, the windblown scenery, the people poking their heads out their houses to catch a glimpse of the performance. All I felt was annoyance at the delay in getting to the lower part of the city, and the miserable wetness that seemed to permeate the fabric of my clothes. When the voices became quieter again, and I arrived at the former entrance to the main shaft, it was already after six-thirty. Total darkness: the wooden doors with their iron mountings glistened damply in the cone of light from my torch. Although heavy chains lay in front of the hole, as I approached I was urged on by that heavy, dank-earth smell that I knew from the old lime cellars. Then I began to tamper with the barriers using the boltcutter.

  At around the same time, the twenty-year-old butcher’s apprentice, Hans Bretschneider, who, with his red cloak and metal leg guards, had been dressed up as St Martin, climbed onto the horse. The animal had to be held by the bridle by two people, it was so nervous on account of the storm, which lashed through the treetops, and at 18.45, just as the performance was about to begin, a row of roof tiles was swiped onto the street from the late baroque-style houses along the Silberzeile. The crowd flinched.

  The report later revealed the following: far below the main square, in the hole, the sand had long since drained away. In other words, in three or four places in the town, the asphalt was nothing more than a thin crust over nothing, held in place only by the tension of the material itself. Like a sheet of paper which, when clamped to solid objects that are drifting apart, slowly loses its inner hold, the concrete between the church and the East Town crunched barely audibly in the rain, as the weight of the horse burdened it. Half of the population was bent over their festive meals in deep intoxication.

  It was 19.02 when one of the workers saw a crack in the cladding of the church tower, which appeared so slowly and clearly before his eyes that he could trace the crack with his finger while it was splitting. He called down to the foreman, who had just started a phone call with the building firm’s regional director, that he needed to come up. The foreman, however, couldn’t hear him because of the wind, and turned away into a niche of the church building in order to finish his conversation. Without further ado, the worker filled the crack and continued plastering as normal.

  Meanwhile the children had arrived at their destination, having made their way clockwise through the town centre, and the performance of St Martin’s story began. Around 19.05, sixty middle-school children, and around two hundred parents, siblings, and residents, watched as Hans Bretschneider cut his cloak in two and threw half of it from his horse to an actor playing a beggar. Only a moment later, as St Martin was riding back to his station in Northern France, the horse bucked and interrupted the history of salvation: it stamped its hooves on the broken paving that a few minutes before had been lying straight, but now seemed to have sunk by a hand’s breadth. Bretschneider dismounted to take a closer look at the ground, and immediately called for his associates: one by one, the stones had popped from their fortifications, as if a huge hand had pulled an underground zip that was just about still holding the town together.

  This happened while I slipped several times on the wet grass, regained my composure, and finally got back on my feet. When touching the ground I’d become puzzled — I’d never felt such a consistency. It was neither wet nor firm, much more like a dense modelling clay that pulled on your arms if you reached into it. I finally reached the doors: I intended to wrestle the first chain to the ground, but the links bent under the slightest exertion like a crayon. It was so brittle that I could have broken it with my bare hand. I wiped the water from my forehead, pushed the wood aside, and came face to face with the hole for the first time.

  The St Martin’s show in town was cut short, and the priest had the church choir intone a final hallelujah. Master-Builder Keinermüller left the window of his inner-city palace for a moment to fetch a third quarter of wine. The rain bounced off the asphalt at an angle constantly being changed by the wind so that it briefly looked as though it was crosshatching the scene as much from below as from above. Even after several attempts, the horse could no longer be calmed, and was tied to a rain gutter.

  For a few seconds it was so quiet that time seemed to stand still, people said in retrospect. This was around 19.20 — which means that only a few seconds passed before a cracking sound could suddenly be heard in the vicinity of the church, which was even discernible by the crowd on Perger Platz. Only a moment later there was a deafening bang, followed by a hissing sound that caused hundreds of people to startle at the same time. The children began to scream, as, out of nowhere, a dust cloud rolled over the heads of the terrified spectators. Several dozen tumbled over the cobblestones that had earlier breached from their entrenchment, and mass panic spread while the thundering wind propelled pieces of debris between the raindrops. Everyone in the dispersing crowd attempted to grab their own child by the hand and pull them from the epicentre. But no one knew where this boom had come from. Only a few people who had been standing at the gateway leading to Johannesstrasse ran straight to the place from where the commotion had originated.

  It was the Church Square. Cries for help could be heard coming from there, rising in volume, much more pitiful than anyone had ever heard before. At 19:26, the first people arrived on the scene from downtown and saw what had happened. The church tower had been severed along an even groove that had sliced cleanly through the stone, and had fallen to the ground, dragging seven workmen into the depths. Those living in the immediate vicinity who had not attended the parade came from their houses, alarmed by the noise. Someone called the emergency services; chaos ensued. Some banded together to pull the injured out of the rubble, but their harnesses had become so deeply twisted in the stone that it was not possible to shift those calling for help even a centimetre. Two of the workmen had died on impact, three were critically injured, and the two who had landed on the upper side of the tower were still responsive. But this was discovered bit by bit, and everyone called out things in batches, which the wind immediately carried off again.

  I myself did not notice the growing unrest. I paused at the entrance of the hole for a few minutes and saw my beam of light dissipate in the distance. Only ten metres through the gate to the tunnel, and already the storm outside could no longer be heard. I waited a moment — I had expected to hear a dripping sound or an echo of my own breathing. But there was nothing but silence. Almost a deadening of sound, a swallowing of it. The outline of a stone staircase led steeply downwards, sculpted out of the mountain in hurried blows. Above my head, the earth was held back by thick beams, on which the iron fittings still gleamed.

  It wasn’
t difficult to climb down the steps, which were surprisingly dry: the contours of a small room stood out in the blackness. The break room, I thought, then I sat on the steps and stared into the darkness.

  At exactly 19.30 the ambulance showed up, but concluded that without the fire brigade none of the victims would be rescued from beneath the rubble. Nevertheless, the emergency doctor present was able to determine the cause of death of two of the men on the spot. The clocktower was looming, unsettled, over the mountain of rubble and kept almost falling on the growing crowd of people, who would scatter screaming every time it moved. Soon every spectator from the St Martin’s play had relocated to the Church Square, most of them foggy from alcohol and adrenaline, along with a shapeless growing anger. A group of a hundred had assembled, a bellowing, uncoordinated group at the edges of the rubble. The fire brigade arrived and the heavy equipment started up. People watched the yellow crane in the heavy downpour and observed ropes being lowered onto the pile of rubble. Then the skin broke.

  What was later considered the most incomprehensible thing about all the events of that day, began with a blank. Nobody was able to recall the short but crucial period between 19.35 and 19.40. The collective memory resumed as Police Chief Matthias Gruber, who had been on duty in the gendarmerie, ran over to a small group of people who, it was said, had broken out into angry shouting for a second time.

  At that moment a switch was thrown: without any cause, even before Gruber could prevent it, someone punched the foreman, who was trembling and cowering on the floor, in the face. As if all they had needed was a hole through which the long-standing pressure could escape, the crowd sighed, but disguised their sighs as screams, and they watched in relief as a second person fired a second blow in the face of the foreman. At the same time, however, this triggered a kind of suppressed panic, the crowd shrinking back from itself. Who had ever seen a man punched so hard in the face, and who hadn’t, in fact, yearned for it? The fire brigade, who had arrived with two more fire engines, had a difficult job to get to the injured through the riled-up groups, and it was scarcely possible to contain the flow of people.