Night Work

by Thomas Glavinic

  2

  Jonas awoke with a sore throat. He felt his forehead. No temperature. He stared up at the ceiling.

  After breakfast, having satisfied himself that the TV was still flickering and the street deserted, he sat down beside the phone. Marie didn’t answer – neither her mobile, nor her relatives’ phone. He couldn’t reach anyone else either.

  He turned out half the medicine cabinet before he found an aspirin. Leaving it to dissolve, hissing, in a glass of water, he took a shower. He put on some casual clothes. He drained the glass in one gulp.

  He looked in both directions as he left the building and came out into the sunlight. He took a few steps, turned his head swiftly. He stopped. Listened. Just the muted lapping of the Danube Canal. He craned his neck and scanned the windows for signs of movement.

  Nothing.

  Back inside again, he went downstairs to his storage space in the basement. He turned the contents of his toolbox upside down without finding anything suitable. Then he remembered the pipe wrench he’d left beside a stack of old tyres.

  *

  ‘Anyone there?’

  His voice sounded absurdly feeble in the Westbahnhof’s spacious concourse.

  Shouldering the pipe wrench, he stomped up the steps to the departure hall. Bureau de change, newsagent, cafés – all were shut.

  He went out onto the platforms. Several trains were standing there as if on the point of pulling out. Back to the departure hall, then out onto the platforms once more.

  Back again.

  Out again.

  He jumped aboard the Intercity to Bregenz and searched it carriage by carriage, compartment by compartment. He called out as he entered each stuffy carriage in turn, gripping the pipe wrench tightly. Sometimes he coughed or cleared his throat with the ferocity of a man fifty pounds heavier. He made as much din as possible by banging the wrench against the partitions.

  By midday he’d explored every last corner of the station. Every train, every ticket office. The lounge. The restaurant where he’d eaten a few lousy meals, which still reeked of stale fat. The supermarket. The tobacconist’s. The News & Books. He’d bashed in windows and glass doors with the pipe wrench, disconnected wailing security alarms and searched a whole series of back rooms. Bread two days old indicated the last time anyone had been there.

  The big arrivals and departures board in the middle of the concourse was blank.

  The clocks were working.

  So were the cash dispensers.

  *

  At Schwechat Airport he didn’t bother to park in the multi-storey and walk all the way back. He left his car right outside the main entrance, in the no-waiting area normally patrolled by policemen and security personnel.

  The temperature out here was somewhat cooler than in the city. Flags were fluttering noisily in the breeze. Shading his eyes with one hand, he searched the sky for aircraft. He strained his ears, but all he could hear was the flap-flap of the flags.

  With the pipe wrench on his shoulder he strode down some dimly lit passages to the departures level. Menus were stuck in their holders on the tables outside the café. The café was shut, like the restaurant and the pub. The lifts were working, the departure lounges accessible. No flights were listed. The electronic displays were blank.

  He combed the entire area. An alarm went off when he passed through a security gate. Repeated blows with the wrench failed to silence it. He peered around uneasily. There was a box on the wall. He pressed several buttons and the wailing finally ceased.

  On the arrivals level he sat down at a computer terminal, trying to discover the last time an aircraft had taken off or landed. Either he didn’t have the expertise to tackle the problem, or the computer had a fault. No amount of messing around with mouse and keyboard would bring up anything on the screen but meaningless, flickering columns of figures.

  He got lost several times before he found the stairs and walked out onto the tarmac.

  Most of the aircraft attached to the telescopic walkways belonged to Austrian Airlines. There was a Lauda, a Lufthansa, a Yemeni machine, another from Belgium. Standing further away was an El-Al 727. This plane interested him most. Why was it so far out? Had it been about to take off?

  When he reached the plane he crouched down. He looked up at it, breathing heavily, then back at the airport buildings. He felt disappointed. It wasn’t anything like as far out as he’d thought. The runway’s dimensions had played a trick on him, nor was there any indication that the pilot had been on his way to the take-off point.

  Jonas started to shout. He hurled the wrench at a window, first in the cockpit and then in the passenger cabin. When it landed on the tarmac for the eighth or ninth time it broke in half.

  He combed every hall, every lounge, every area accessible to him. In the loading bay he made a discovery that galvanised him: dozens of bags and suitcases.

  Excitedly, he opened one. Underclothes. Socks. Shirts. Swimming trunks.

  Neither this bag nor any of the others contained any clue to what had happened to their owners. There weren’t enough to suggest that they belonged to an entire flight. It seemed more probable that they’d either been forgotten or were awaiting collection. They might have come from anywhere, any time. No help at all.

  *

  He got out at the intersection of Karolinengasse and Mommsengasse. Reaching in through the driver’s window, he sounded the horn and looked up at the front of the building as he did so. Not a window opened, not a curtain twitched, even though he hooted continuously.

  He didn’t bother to press the intercom button. The front door, most of which was glass, yielded to a couple of blows with the remaining half of his wrench. He ducked through the jagged opening and went inside.

  Werner’s flat was on the first floor. A photograph of a heavily laden yak was pinned to the door beneath the spyhole, and the doormat greeted visitors with a grimy Rolling Stones tongue. He couldn’t help remembering how often he’d stood there, bottle of wine in hand, and listened to Werner’s approaching footsteps.

  He hammered on the door with the remains of his wrench. He couldn’t open it – only a crowbar would have forced the lock. He felt in his pockets for something to write with, meaning to leave a message under the spyhole. All he found apart from a pencil was a dirty handkerchief. When he tried to scrawl a few words on the door itself, the lead broke off.

  *

  On reaching the Südbahnhof he noticed how hungry he was.

  In the station concourse he trotted from ticket office to ticket office, shop to shop, smashing the windows with his wrench. He didn’t disconnect the security alarms this time. Having broken the window of the bureau de change, he waited to see if its alarm would go off, or if he would have to continue his orgy of destruction. Perhaps some still-surviving guardian of the law would think a heist was in progress and intervene.

  To the ear-splitting accompaniment of the security alarms he rode the escalator up to the platforms. Taking his time, he began by exploring platforms 1 to 11 in the east section, where he’d seldom been before. Then he boarded the second escalator.

  He also smashed the windows of the shops in the south section. They weren’t equipped with burglar alarms, which surprised him. He raided one for a bag of crisps and a can of lemonade, plus a packet of paper handkerchiefs for his runny nose. From the newsagent’s he grabbed a stack of newspapers two days old.

  Without searching it from end to end, he got into the rear carriage of a train bound for Zagreb. The seat was hot, the compartment stuffy. He yanked the window open and sat down, putting his feet on the seat opposite without removing his shoes.

  While mechanically stuffing crisps into his mouth he looked through the newspapers. Not the smallest indication that some exceptional occurrence was imminent. Political squabbles at home, crises abroad, reports of horrors and banalities. The TV pages listed series, talk shows, magazine programmes.

  His eyelids drooped.

  The muffled, mono
tonous wail of the security alarms drifted into the compartment.

  He swept the papers off his lap. He could afford a brief nap. Only a minute with his eyes closed and the muted strains of the sirens in his ears. Only a minute …

  He jumped up and rubbed his face hard. He looked for a bolt on the door, then remembered that only sleepers were lockable.

  He went out into the corridor.

  ‘Hello? Anyone there?’

  He tested one of the curtains with his fingertips. It was so grimy and impregnated with nicotine, he wouldn’t have touched it normally. He tugged at it with all his might. There was a ripping sound and he fell over backwards with the length of material in his hand. Using what was left of the pipe wrench, he managed to tear it into several strips. These he used to lash the door handle to the grille of the luggage rack.

  Having made a bed out of the six seats, he drained his can of lemonade and lay down.

  He felt a bit more cheerful now. Lying there open-eyed with his head resting on his arm, he ran his fingers over the plush upholstery. They encountered a cigarette burn.

  He couldn’t help thinking of the summer he and some friends had spent touring Europe by train. He’d travelled many thousands of kilometres on a moving bed like this one. From one unfamiliar smell to another. From one happening to the next. From one exciting city to an even more alluring one. Fifteen years ago, it was.

  The people he’d slept rough with in parks and railway stations – where were they at this moment?

  Where were the people he’d been speaking to only two days ago?

  Where was he? In a train. It was uncomfortable. It wasn’t going anywhere.

  *

  He might have slept for half an hour. Some saliva had trickled from the corner of his mouth. Instinctively, he wiped it off the seat with his sleeve. He looked at the door. His makeshift lock was intact. He shut his eyes and listened. No change. The security alarms were wailing exactly as before.

  He blew his nose, which was stuffed up with cold and the dust from the compartment. Then he tried to untie the strips of curtain around the door handle. It turned out that he’d done his work too well. He picked at the knots with his fingers, but he was too clumsy and impatient. He tried brute force, but the door wouldn’t budge and the knots tightened still more. They were past untying now.

  He had no choice but to free himself by violent means. He smashed the window with the wrench. Carefully, he climbed out into the corridor. He glanced back into the compartment, committing the scene to memory in case he should return for some reason.

  Then he looted the supermarket.

  He filled a wire-mesh basket with drinks and tins of soup, nibbles and bars of chocolate, apples and bananas. He also took meat and sausages. The perishable stuff would soon go off. He didn’t dare think when he might get another fresh steak.

  He circled his car before getting in, uncertain whether he had parked it at that particular spot.

  He peered around. He walked a few steps, then went back to the car.

  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.