I had started packing my things after I got home from the visit to the garage. Having them standing in the hallway gave me the assurance that if I decided to go, I wouldn’t need more than twenty minutes to leave it all behind. Whether it had been the Countess who had intervened so my car wouldn’t be repaired, or whether it was a common custom that no one ever considered moving away, I no longer cared. My life couldn’t take another mystery. I sat at my virtually overflowing desk, which was so full it had incapacitated me for the longest time already. For years I had done nothing but the work of a crypto-analyst: finding patterns, clusters in the files, so that with the intuition of a detective I could immediately doubt them again. I had found a total of seventy-one ‘cases’, as I called them. Twenty-five cases of land purchases by the Count’s family in 1950, and forty-six transactions made in 1962, after the Schlaf trial. There was hardly any unsold property left. All seventy-one instances were in order, and had been prepared with the relevant material ready for handover. But to whom were they handed?
Then on some days, everything once more collapsed over my head: in the darkest moments, I wondered what difference it made — thirty-four dead or two hundred or two thousand? What was the point of finding the place where they lay, and the names and identities of those who had buried them?
What difference did it make to know about the Countess, whom I had long since found out was not a Countess, and whose family had simply made a career as industrialists seventy years ago and risen to the monarchy through an improbable bureaucratic act? What would it mean to be a real Countess anyway? Wasn’t all noble blood essentially imaginary?
The history was maddening. I knew intuitively what had happened, and yet I still couldn’t prove it — not even to myself. This was my daily struggle. It was so obvious: ten men alone would never have been able to kill eight hundred forced labourers, and it couldn’t be purely coincidental that the bodies would later end up in people’s gardens.
The ironic thing was: all the documents that I needed in order to be able to prove what had happened and when, my parents had borrowed and carried off to Vienna. I was firmly convinced that the two of them had been researching the exact same thing that I was, and I needed their findings. After a lengthy struggle, I had finally decided to write to my aunt. I had been waiting for the materials for many weeks now, and she had still not been in touch.
Nothing fit together at the edges; the transitions remained frayed. If the rubble was cleared away a little too quickly or if one were to skip a few weeks in an otherwise completely chronological story … if the words became permeable and imprecise, I copied the documents and began to brood over them. I wildly desired an accusation, but it was clearly nothing — almost always nothing. Instead there was a too-little, a vanishing. I had to be able to prove things in order to pass them on to the media; inconsistencies alone wouldn’t be enough. After ten minutes of digging through piles of papers, I was completely beside myself. I wanted to hand over the material to journalists, yet feared the consequences. I wanted to get away, yet was hopelessly matted together with this town. I took every precaution, but life after leaving Greater Einland seemed to me like a cloud of fog, within which I couldn’t envisage anything.
I looked at the time and realised that I had been fussing around for two hours without having done the slightest thing. There wasn’t actually anything more to do; everything had been put away in boxes and emptied out. Although I wasn’t really looking forward to it, I was to a certain extent relieved when I set off around 7pm for some social distraction.
19
The doorbell ringing surprised me the following morning while I was showering. When the bell rang a second and third time, I finally wrapped myself in a towel and went to the door with my hair still dripping. It was only Philipp, probably wanting to admonish me to do some work.
‘For God’s sake, I was still in the shower,’ I said, and wanted to slam the door right there and then, but he put his foot in the way.
‘It’s important,’ he said. His expression was deadly serious.
‘No sermons, it’s my day off. Did the Countess complain about it?’
‘You got your car back, I see.’
‘Oh, yes, now that the roads will be passable again soon, I thought it couldn’t hurt,’ I said, avoiding his gaze. ‘What’s up?’
Suddenly, and against all expectations, my car had appeared in front of my house one morning, and every day when I returned home, I made sure that it was still there. I still couldn’t believe that it was on my property, and that the keys to my departure were jangling around in my handbag. Furthermore: I’d been rehearsing, as I called it in my head, in that I sat behind the steering wheel for a few minutes every day. I stayed there, tensed, my hand on the clutch as if the car were about to lift off from my garage and leave the atmosphere. Fortunately, Philipp didn’t seem further interested in my car.
‘I don’t want anything special, I was just on my way to work and wanted to ask you something.’ He shifted from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. ‘Your garden,’ he said at last and then broke off again.
‘What about my garden?’ In one fell swoop, the volume of the surrounding area powered down.
‘All of us up at the office — it doesn’t matter. I mean, that’s the best place to see it. And I wanted to ask you personally. To be honest, I was shocked when I realised.’
Like two hundred-metre runners who are only a hare’s breadth apart, no one had noticed at first how the general landscape, frantically racing towards the finishing line of summer, was being lapped in aridity by my garden. But at the end of July, when the orange stripes reached into every field to gently force them out of this year’s lifecycle, my plot was already parched. I had sprayed and sprayed, sprinkling the plants with atomised water to cool them from above, but it was hopeless. A whitish-yellow stain had appeared in the green of the town, as if someone had stubbed out a huge cigarette and dead tissue had remained. Ashamed, I had dismissed my neighbours’ inquiries by claiming to have used the wrong fertiliser, but the consequences quickly became too severe to sustain my excuses. Suspicion around my property grew in silence. When I awoke one morning, I found that the linden tree in my garden had shaken off all its leaves in a single, final exhale, and I hastily shoved them into rubbish bags before someone saw what I was doing. There was a dogged stench of rot, but who would notice that in a town being swallowed by a huge hole? I was embarrassed about the filler, but there was nothing to be done about it now.
The most horrific thing had been a moment, one day after work, when I took the long-avoided way through the backyard: it was a windless late summer, and yet there was an odd movement on the lawn. The long dried-out grass swayed to and fro. As I bent down to see what was causing this waving motion, I saw that the whole of the yellow lawn was teeming with worms: worms that had escaped from the airless earth and were writhing, lost between sky and ground.
I had lain down on the couch as if in shock: I had poisoned nature to save a house that could by no means be saved. From then on I was haunted by horror — when I was sitting at work, when I ate, when I outwardly appeared to be having fun, but especially when I planned to go for a walk, as I had so often done in the past. It was then that the betrayal was most palpable to me. Had I once really loved this land? Yes, of course I had. The most important thing was that I hadn’t handed over the filler. It was only a tiny little patch that had been affected by the poison. Yet my treachery haunted me, a relentless indebtedness to every little shrub. When I walked passed a tree, I looked around furtively, as if we shouldn’t be seen together.
‘I thought we were on good terms.’ It was the first time Philipp had spoken to me this way. His jovial flirtatiousness was as if blown away, and I said nothing — the time for denial was long past.
‘I want to be honest with you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this, but it is deeply selfish of you.’
>
‘I don’t follow,’ I said, and could hear for myself how ridiculous that sounded.
‘We all know that you’ve found a filler.’
I trapped Anita in the office with my arm, just like when someone catches a ball they’ve seen racing towards them out of the corner of their eye. It happened almost reflexively, so that I didn’t know how to even explain the gesture. ‘Was there something?’ she asked. I nodded first, and then agitatedly shook my head.
‘I wanted to ask if you’d maybe like to go for a beer with me, now for instance.’
‘We’re not finished yet,’ she said, even though she already had her coat over her arm, ready to go.
After it had come out that I had kept the filler a secret from everyone, the atmosphere in the office, after the expected explosion, was markedly frosty. Strangely enough, the Countess had been the first to forgive me, even though my story of how I’d wanted to test the substance myself was completely implausible and full of holes. Nevertheless, she had, after a few stern words about my misconduct, let it go. More than anything, she seemed glad that things were now getting underway. My colleagues, on the other hand, let me know that they didn’t believe a word I said. Having said that, the now necessary overtime was done in silence, and for the first time, the dogged listlessness of the people of Greater Einland that made them shy away from any and all conflict suited me fine. My relationship with Anita, however, had remained distant, and although we came in at eight in the morning, and sometimes did not leave the office before ten, we hadn’t really spoken for weeks.
‘Come on, one beer,’ I insisted. ‘We won’t get anything else productive done today anyway.’
It was shortly before nine. ‘Just one,’ Anita said, shaking her head despite this affirmation. We walked into town in silence for ten oppressive minutes, whereby I kept clearing my throat and breathing heavily in order to commence with an explanation, but kept refraining from doing so at the last moment and only asked whenever we turned ‘Left?’ or ‘It’s a right now, isn’t it?’ even though I knew the way. It was only once we’d arrived downtown that I plucked up the courage.
‘It’s been very difficult,’ I said at last.
‘The calculations this afternoon?’ Anita asked, and I nodded, even though I meant the matter about the filler.
‘There are so many fiscal obligations to consider, that’s why — I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the filler sooner,’ I finally said, incoherently. We were both silent for a while.
‘Do you remember, when we were cooking at my house, two months ago? You claimed to have made no progress whatsoever.’
Of course, she was right. I walked silently beside her as if superfluous.
‘Now that I come to think of it,’ she said, drawing a breath to elaborate, ‘you actually put on a right farce that evening. I feel incapable of being a physicist, you said. I comforted you.’
‘It was a Friday,’ I said, even though that didn’t explain in the slightest.
‘You downed a glass of wine and stared at the wall, Ruth. It was Oscar-worthy. Maybe you even cried? I think you cried.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I replied quietly, because we were already near the main square.
‘Absolute torrents were running from your eyes. I gave you serviettes because there weren’t any tissues left, do you remember?’
‘No.’
‘Whatever. The properties and homes of dozens of people are in danger of collapsing, because you kept it to yourself. It doesn’t matter to you — you safeguarded your house in good time.’ I was stunned at the anger that Anita, usually so soft and shy, could suddenly manage.
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you see what happened to my garden?’ I was slowly regaining my composure.
‘That’s beside the point! What good is a garden if it’s a hundred and fifty metres deep in the mountain?’ She was right, of course. Still, I struggled for an answer.
‘I loved the nature here, Anita, and what has come out of this bloody filler? Must we either have no landscape at all or only a dead one? No home or a rotting one?’ While I had been saying this, we had taken our seats in Café Français.
‘I could have handled the work that you’ve saddled us with,’ Anita said. ‘But that you lied to me as a friend is unforgiveable,’ and then she turned to the waiter, smiling politely. This made me explode.
‘Everyone here lies all the time! No one is honest, everyone does what they like!’ I said, swiping the toothpicks from the table while doing so. The cup they had been standing in broke with a clatter, and for a moment the whole restaurant looked over at our table.
‘Well then, please,’ she whispered. ‘Explain it to me.’
‘Excuse me, there’s something on the floor here!’ I quickly called into the room.
‘I’m listening,’ Anita said impatiently.
I laughed to show how unwilling I was to reveal my motives. ‘You should trust me more. You might not even believe it anyway. There were certain things I needed to evaluate,’ I raved aimlessly, while a waitress kneeled on the floor to clear up the broken pieces.
‘This is pointless, I’m leaving,’ she said, picking up her jacket. I dithered helplessly between options. This was Anita, my friend. And yet: she was a Greater Einlander, raised in awe of the Countess and the mountain.
‘Okay, let’s go over there around the corner,’ I said finally, and we sat at a secluded table. I thought over for a long time how I should begin.
‘It might sound weird now, but over the past year I’ve been conducting research,’ I said, detecting a glass splinter in the sole of my shoe.
‘Everybody knows that you take documents home for your memorial service.’
I looked around. ‘I have collated certain incidents in Greater Einland that are not directly related to my parents. From the National Socialist era.’
‘Incidents, regarding whom?’
‘The hole. It’s to do with crimes.’
‘Crimes in the hole?’ Anita asked, confused.
‘Of course in the hole. Unsolved murders,’ I hissed. The glass splinter fell with a tinkle from my sole to the floor.
‘How do you mean, inside? The main shaft is vertical, how could someone murder someone in there?’
I tried to stay calm. ‘The exact location doesn’t matter. The hole was just a cover-up. Listen —’ I was suddenly so nervous that I had to drink half my beer in one gulp. It was the first time I’d spoken these thoughts out loud, and they sounded strange even to me. ‘You know that concentration camp prisoners were stationed here, right? At its peak almost two thousand of them.’
‘Everyone knows that. It’s even in the local chronicle,’ Anita said.
‘One thousand two hundred of them left for Mauthausen — so far, so good. The rest were said to have been killed by the guards. But in the mass grave on Johannesstrasse only about fifty were found.’
‘But everyone knows that, it’s in the local chronicle,’ she repeated, as if our conversation had slipped into a time loop. ‘None of that’s new.’
‘Where did the other seven hundred and fifty go? I’ve been researching this for a long time.’ I was sweating like I was in a sauna.
‘Since when have you been interested in local history?’ Anita laughed, as if to break the tension, and then fidgeted with her hands. ‘Maybe they ran away? Who could possibly find that out now?’
I wanted to respond, but in that moment two schnitzels were brought over, which I couldn’t remember having ordered. Bemused, I waved my hand to call over the waitress. That I was silent for a moment seemed to calm Anita.
‘Ruth, please let’s stop arguing. You won’t be here forever, why reheat these old stories? Other people have to take care of Greater Einland.’ When the waitress had still not reappeared, I bit into the schnitzel, which I hadn’t wanted in the slightest.
‘There are enough other things going on in the world. More important, more current things. Can’t you devote yourself to them for a change? I would care more about the rest of the world and its abysses if I were you.’
‘Since I’ve known you, you haven’t left Greater Einland for a single day to take care of the so-called rest of the world,’ I said.
‘Well, how can I? I have a family!’ she replied snappishly. ‘What I mean to say it: everyone in this town — every single one — has brooded over the hole for long enough.’ She ate her schnitzel too, as if there was nothing strange about it — it had probably been served to us due to our changing tables, I thought.
‘Be that as it may,’ I began once more. ‘Certain things need to be discussed. And now, before the damn filling in.’
‘You can’t force anyone to do anything. Freedom is humanity’s most valuable possession,’ she said in her usual mild tone — a mildness to which I didn’t intend to respond.
‘Do you remember Hat-Maker Schlaf’s parents? Bodies were found in their garden in the sixties. After that, the police wanted to check more properties, but they were all bought up by the countdom.’
‘Help ought only to be given to those who ask,’ Anita interrupted me again. What was she trying to say to me with these meaningless verbal castlings? I was becoming more irate by the minute.
‘All the public land, including the private houses. If the authorities sent a letter stating they wanted to investigate somewhere, the place in question was bought by the Count’s family two months later. If the documents I’ve found match up, there is a total of seventy-one instances of such cases. Seventy-one!’
While listening, Anita had become distant again.
‘You’re completely paranoid,’ she said at last. Since I had mentioned the countdom she had shifted about restlessly in her seat. ‘And you have to make up all of this right before the festival?’
The Liquid Land Page 23