When he put in the Hollandstrasse tape, the screen gave a brief flash and went dark.
He knuckled his forehead and shut his eyes. The tape had been a new one. He’d unwrapped it, put it in the camera and pressed all the right buttons. All of them! The REC symbol had lit up clearly.
He switched cameras. Nothing. The tape was blank. Blank, but not unplayed. He knew what an unplayed tape showed: it flickered. This one showed darkness.
He stroked his chin. Cocked his head. Ran his fingers through his hair.
It had to be chance, a technical fault. He was reluctant to see signs in everything.
To soothe his imagination he shot a test sequence with the same camera and another tape. He expected the playback to be blank. To his bewilderment, the reproduction was perfect.
So it had to be the tape.
He put it into the camera that had been running in Hollandstrasse, shot a few seconds’ worth of film, wound it back and checked it. No complaints. A top-quality picture.
Although it was broad daylight, he lowered the blinds until all that relieved the gloom were two narrow strips of light on the carpet. With the shotgun propped up beside him, he watched the tape from beginning to end. It never came to life. There was nothing to be seen, absolutely nothing. Yet it had been recorded.
Halfway through he pressed freeze-frame and snapped the TV with the Polaroid, then waited tensely for the picture to appear.
It showed the screen as dark as it was in reality.
While looking at the photo he remembered his notion that continuous slowness could kill. If this were true, if you rubbed shoulders with eternity by performing an endless movement that culminated in immobility, what was that – reassuring or terrifying?
He aimed the camera at the screen once more. With his eye to the viewfinder, he put his finger on the shutter release and gently depressed it. He tried to reduce the pressure more and more.
The point of release, he felt, would soon be reached.
He depressed the button more slowly still. A tingling sensation took possession of his finger. Went up into his arm. His shoulder. He sensed that the point of release was approaching, but that the speed of its approach was lessening.
The tingling had now permeated his entire body. His head swam. He seemed to hear a distant whistling that must have been deafening at its source.
He had the impression that a process of some kind had begun. Various constants of perception such as space, matter, air, time, seemed to be coalescing. All were flowing into each other. Coagulating.
A sudden decision. He pressed the shutter release all the way. A click, a flash, and a thin sheet of card came purring out of the camera. He slumped back on the sofa. His sweat smelt acrid. His jaws were clamped together.
*
The last videotape had been shot on the Reichsbrücke. It showed the Danube flowing steadily past and the motionless shape of the Donauinsel, the island whose pubs had been among Jonas’s favourite haunts. Only four weeks ago he had subjected himself, for Marie’s sake, to the alcoholic hurly-burly of the Donauinsel Festival.
After a few minutes his eyes widened. Unconsciously, he sat up inch by inch and leant forwards as if to crawl into the TV.
An object was drifting down the river. A red bundle.
He rewound the tape. He couldn’t make out what it was. It vaguely resembled a hiker’s rucksack, though a rucksack would have tended to sink rather than float. A sheet of plastic seemed more likely, or a plastic container. Or a bag.
Jonas rewound the tape several times. He watched the little red blob come into view top left, grow bigger, gradually take shape, become clearly visible for a moment, and then go out of shot at the bottom of the screen. Should he drive there at once and search the shores of the Donauinsel, or watch the rest of the tape?
He stayed where he was. Sitting cross-legged on the sofa with his heart pounding, he stared avidly at the surface of the Danube. He wasn’t disappointed when the tape ended without his noticing anything else out of the ordinary. Dutifully, he watched the whole tape again and conducted the usual freeze-frame and slow-rewind experiments before pocketing his car keys and picking up the gun.
The phone caught his eye as he passed it.
Oh well, he thought. It wouldn’t ring now.
*
He wanted first of all to inspect the video camera’s location, so he pulled up on the bridge itself. He saw, as soon as he got out, that something was different.
He walked around. Twenty paces this way, twenty paces that. The wind blowing into his face was so chilly he regretted not having worn a jacket. He turned up the collar of his shirt.
Something was wrong, he felt sure.
Roughly at the spot where he’d sited the camera, he rested his elbows on the parapet. He looked down at the Danube, which was flowing past with a subdued murmur. That sound had been drowned before, even at night, by the noise of cars and lorries crossing the bridge. But it wasn’t the sound of the river that puzzled him.
He scanned the surface for the approximate course the object had followed. It had come into shot back there. What was over there? And it had floated out of shot down there. Where would it have drifted to?
He went over to the other side of the bridge. The long, narrow island stretched away to the north-west as far as he could see, lapped by the Danube on either side. There were no grilles or gratings in the river bed, no sizeable spits or inlets, so it was unlikely that the red object had lodged somewhere or been washed ashore. Nevertheless, he had to look for it.
As he stood there with his hands in his pockets, resting his stomach against the parapet, he suddenly recalled his old, long-held ambition: to be a survivor.
Jonas had often imagined what it might be like if he narrowly missed a train that later came to grief in the mountains.
He’d pictured it in every detail. The brakes failed, the train plunged over a precipice. Carriages impacted and were crushed. Shortly afterwards, aerial views of the scene were shown on TV. Paramedics tending the injured, firemen scurrying around, blue lights flashing everywhere. He saw the pictures on a TV in a shop window. Anxious friends kept phoning for reassurance. Marie wept. Even his father nearly broke down. For days afterwards, he had to explain how this dispensation of providence had come about.
Or he took an earlier flight than originally scheduled. He got to the airport in good time, so as to do some shopping and buy Marie something nice in the duty-free shop. Then it turned out that a seat was available on an earlier flight. In one variant of this fantasy he inadvertently checked in at the wrong desk but managed to obtain a seat thanks to a computer error. Every version of the same imaginary scenario culminated in the destruction of the plane on whose passenger list his name appeared. His death was announced on the news. Once again, he had to reassure grief-stricken friends. ‘It’s a mistake, I’m alive.’ A shout at the other end of the line: ‘He’s alive!’
A car crash in which he climbed out of a complete write-off, uninjured save for a few scratches, with dead bodies lying all around him. A falling brick that missed him by inches and killed a total stranger. A heist in which hostages were shot, one by one, until police stormed the building and rescued him. A madman running amok. A terrorist attack. A stabbing. Mass poisoning in a restaurant.
Jonas had always wanted to brave some public peril. To win the laurels of one who had undergone some great ordeal.
To be a survivor.
To be a member of the elect.
Now he was.
*
Driving along the Donauinsel wasn’t difficult, but he was afraid of missing some important detail, so he set off on foot. He soon came to the shop that hired out bicycles and mopeds. This, he remembered, was where he and Marie had rented one of those pedal-operated buggies favoured by tourists at seaside resorts in Italy.
The place wasn’t locked. The keys for the mopeds were hanging on the wall, each tagged with its registration number.
He picked a dark
green Vespa that would have delighted his sixteen-year-old self. His parents had no savings. The money he’d earned from his first holiday job wouldn’t run to more than an ancient Puch DS 50. When he bought a second-hand Mazda at the age of twenty, he’d been only the second car-owner in the family after Uncle Reinhard.
With the shotgun clamped between his thighs, he cruised along the island’s asphalted roads. Again he had the feeling that something was wrong. It wasn’t just the absence of people. Something else was missing.
He got off and walked down to the water’s edge, cupped his hands around his mouth.
‘Hello!’
He hadn’t shouted in the hope that anyone would hear him. It relieved the pressure in his chest for a moment.
‘Hello!’
He kicked some pebbles along in front of him. Gravel crunched beneath his soles. He ventured too close to the water and sank in, soaking his shoes.
His quest for the red object no longer interested him. It seemed pointless, looking for a scrap of plastic that had drifted past here days ago. It wasn’t a sign. It was a bit of flotsam.
The day was growing colder. Dark clouds were racing towards him, wind lashing the long grass beside the road. Jonas suddenly remembered the phone at home. He turned to go just as the first raindrops spattered his face.
8
He awoke from a nightmare. It took him a few seconds of bemusement to grasp that it was early in the morning, and that he was lying beside the phone. He sank back onto the mattress.
He had dreamt that people were streaming back into the city. He went to meet them. They straggled past him in ones and twos and small groups, like people going home after a football match.
He didn’t dare ask where they’d been. They took no notice of him. He heard their voices. Heard them talking, laughing, joking together. Never closer to them than ten metres, he walked down the middle of the street. They passed him on either side. Every time he tried to attract their attention, his voice failed.
He was feeling worn out. Not only had he spent another night beside the phone, but he hadn’t got around to undressing.
He checked to see if the receiver was on properly.
While looking for some pumpernickel in the bottom drawer of the kitchen cupboard, he caught his backside on the fridge. The mobile in his hip pocket took a knock. Although it was unlikely to have been damaged, he fished it out and checked. His mobile had to be preserved at all costs. He couldn’t afford to lose the SIM card, at least.
No sooner had he pocketed it again than a terrible suspicion came over him. With trembling fingers he accessed the list of outgoing calls. The most recent entry was his own home number, dialled at 16.31 on 16.07.
He dashed to the phone. Trampling around on the mattress, he rummaged in a heap of paper until he discovered the note lying, clearly visible, on top of the address book.
16.42, 16 July.
*
Although he’d intended to do some work at his father’s flat, he drove aimlessly around the city. He headed south along the Handelskai. When he passed the Millennium Tower he looked up. Dazzled by the sun, he swerved and braked sharply, then drove on more slowly. His heart was thumping.
He saw from afar that his banner was still revolving around the Danube Tower. He drove up to the entrance but didn’t dare get out. He looked for some indication that the banner had lured someone there. High overhead, the café continued to rotate with a rhythmical hum that was drowned at regular intervals by ominous splintering sounds. It wouldn’t be long, he imagined, before the whole superstructure disintegrated.
He drove across the Reichsbrücke into Lassallestrasse. A minute later he pulled up beside the Big Wheel. He made a brief tour of the area, gun in hand. It was hot. There was no wind. Not a cloud in the sky.
Satisfied that there were no nasty surprises outside, he walked past the café and into the Big Wheel’s administrative offices. The control room lay beyond an inconspicuous door in the shop that sold miniature models of the Big Wheel and other tourist tat.
He looked at the console, which was the size of a school blackboard. Although the controls weren’t marked, as they were in the Danube Tower, he quickly grasped that the yellow button turned the entire system’s power supply on and off. He pressed it and some lights came on. An indicator started flashing. He pressed another button. The lowest gondola, which he could clearly see through a window from his place at the console, began to move.
A marker pen was lying on one of the desks. He used it to write his phone number on a computer screen. He also left a message on the door. Then he put the marker pen in his shirt pocket.
He walked to the nearest hot-dog stand, the one he’d eaten at on his last visit. He found a packet of biscuits on a shelf and breakfasted on them, never taking his eyes off the gondolas.
Should he board one?
*
He combed the amusement park on foot, turning on all the rides he could. Although he couldn’t always get the controls to work, he managed to do so often enough to fill the fairground with music and movement. The din wasn’t as loud as it used to be, of course. He hadn’t started enough roundabouts and Flying Carpets for that. Besides, there weren’t any people. If he shut his eyes, though, he could still, by a stretch of the imagination, yield to the illusion that all was as it always had been. That he was standing beside the fountain surrounded by half-drunk strangers. That he would soon buy himself some grilled corn on the cob. And that Marie would be back from Antalya tonight.
*
Jonas carried the mattress back into the bedroom and changed the sheets. The floor beside the phone needed tidying up. He stuffed the empty crisp packets and half-eaten bars of chocolate into a plastic sack, tossed the drink cans in as well and swept the floor. Last of all, he scrubbed off the rings the glasses had left on the floorboards. While doing this, he resolved not to let things slide again. He must at least keep order within his own four walls.
He set up the video camera facing the bed and turned it on. The view wasn’t inclusive enough. Although he would later be able to observe every flicker of expression on his face, this videotape would be of use to him only if he could manage to lie still all night. Quite a challenge.
He zoomed out as far as he could. Still not enough. He moved the tripod back a metre and peered at the miniature screen again. This time the image was satisfactory. The whole of the bed was in shot. Not wanting another surprise, he made sure the camera and tape weren’t damaged.
He was still too on edge to go to sleep, so he sat down in front of the TV with a bag of popcorn. He’d exchanged the Love Parade video for a feature film – a comedy – with the sound on. He hadn’t watched a feature film since his first few days of solitude, so he hadn’t heard a human voice other than his own.
At the first words of the female lead, such horror gripped him that he wanted to turn the film off. He resisted the urge and hoped it would pass.
It got worse. His throat tied itself into a knot. He got goosebumps. His hands started to tremble. His legs were so weak he couldn’t stand up.
He switched off with the remote and crawled over to the video recorder on all fours. He substituted the Love Parade tape for the feature film. Crawled back. Hauled himself onto the sofa again.
Pressed ‘Play’.
Turned off the sound.
*
In the night he woke up. Half dreaming, he shuffled into the bedroom. He didn’t bother brushing his teeth and was past undressing, but he turned on the camera.
REC.
Flopped down on the bed.
*
On his way to Matzleinsdorf goods yard, where Machine Park South was situated, he passed the church on the Mariahilfer Gürtel. He read the poster on its façade as he drove by:
There is One who loves you: Jesus Christ.
He stepped harder on the accelerator.
Apart from the Central Cemetery, Machine Park South was Vienna’s biggest walled enclosure. Jonas had ne
ver been there before. It took him five minutes to find the entrance. He was amazed when he rounded the corner. He’d never seen such a concentration of heavy goods vehicles parked at regular intervals as if about to be photographed for an advertisement. There must have been hundreds of them.
Many were articulated lorries. However, handling those took a certain amount of practice, and the trailer had first to be connected to the cab. He wanted an ordinary HGV. A truck with some space.
He threaded his way between the vehicles, annoyed with himself for having forgotten to put on any sun cream. He was so afraid of getting sunburnt he interrupted his search several times to mop his face and drink some mineral water in the air-conditioned Spider. He took a swig, drummed on the steering wheel. Looked in the rear-view mirror.
At last he thought he’d found what he needed. A DAF of around sixty tons. Unfortunately, the key wasn’t in the ignition. He didn’t feel like searching the offices for it, so he plumped for a somewhat older but even bigger model, which was likewise equipped with all the indispensable extras. It had a radio, a small TV, air-conditioning, and, in the spacious sleeping place behind the driver’s seat, a cooker.
His spirits rose when he started the engine. It was a long time since he’d heard anything like it. The truck had power to spare. He liked the view from the cab, too. In the Spider he seemed to be only a few centimetres above the road, whereas here he felt he was on the first floor of a house with picture windows.
The papers were in the glove compartment, as were some of the former driver’s possessions. These he threw out of the window unexamined, together with two T-shirts that had been lying on the bunk.
He fetched two metal ramps from a repair shop. Then he used the marker pen from the Big Wheel office to write Dear Jonas, 21 July. Yours, Jonas on a notice board on the wall.
Night Work Page 8