Night Work

by Thomas Glavinic

  Nothing to it, they all said briskly. There was a light above the inn door. It was only really dark near the skittle alley. He was chicken if he didn’t go. No fuss now, just get it over with quickly.

  No, he said.

  Uncle Reinhard came closer, waving the banknote under his nose. They were downstairs, just inside the front door. Jonas looked at the path that led past the skittle alley, looked at each grown-up in turn.

  No, he repeated.

  And that was that, even though his mother was gesticulating and pulling angry faces behind Uncle Reinhard’s back. Uncle Reinhard had laughed and patted him on the shoulder. Jonas would soon discover that ghosts didn’t exist, he said. His parents had turned away and hardly spoken to him for the next two days.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ Jonas said, vainly scanning the darkness for some recognisable shapes at least.

  He turned his head abruptly. He couldn’t get rid of the feeling that sooner or later, when he looked over his shoulder like that, the wolf-bear would be standing there. It would be there, and he would have known it would appear.

  Leaving the rifle behind, he went downstairs. He opened the front door and stepped out onto the weatherworn flagstones of the forecourt.

  It was cold. And pitch-black. No wind, no crickets chirping, no sound save the grating of pebbles on the flagstones beneath his feet. He couldn’t get used to the absence of sounds made by living creatures. Wasps, bees and flies could be annoying. He had cursed their persistent humming and buzzing a thousand times. The barking of dogs had sometimes struck him as a diabolical nuisance, and even some birdsong was strident rather than easy on the ear. But he would have preferred the whine of a mosquito to the relentless silence prevailing here. Even, perhaps, the roar of a prowling lion.

  He had to go, he knew.

  ‘Well, this is it.’

  He pretended to be holding something in his hand as if shielding it from view. Meanwhile, he ran through the forthcoming excursion in his mind’s eye. He pictured himself opening the garden gate, making his way past the skittle alley and, finally, reaching the inn’s terrace. He would open the door, turn on the lights, get two bottles of beer from the bar, turn out the lights and return by the same route.

  ‘Really nice,’ he muttered, scratching his palm with a fingernail.

  In thirty seconds he would set off. In five minutes at most he would be back. In five minutes’ time he would be holding two bottles. He would also have proved something. Five minutes were bearable, they were a mere nothing. He could count off the seconds and think of something else.

  His legs felt numb. He stood motionless on the flagstones with the open door behind him. Minutes went by.

  So he was wrong. He’d been mistaken when he’d thought it would all be over in five minutes. He’d been destined to set off a few minutes later. The time he’d thought would mark the end of his ordeal was really its beginning.

  He concentrated on making his mind a blank and setting off.

  He thought of nothing, thought of nothing, thought of nothing. And then set off.

  He bumped into the garden gate. Opened it. Stumbled through the darkness. Groped his way along the wooden wall of the skittle alley.

  A crunch of gravel beneath his feet announced that he’d reached the car park. He glimpsed the terrace and hurried on. I’ll kill you, he thought.

  The bell tinkled. He didn’t think he could bear it. His hand felt for the light switch. He screwed up his eyes, then cautiously opened them and looked round. Don’t think, carry on.

  ‘Good evening, I’ve come for some beer!’

  He turned on all the lights, laughing harshly, and helped himself to two bottles of beer. Without turning off the lights he made his way back across the terrace to the car park. The glow from the inn windows was enough for him to see where he was going. But he could also see where the light ended and the sea of darkness awaited him.

  When he plunged into the gloom he felt he wouldn’t make it. He would start thinking again any minute. And that would be that.

  He broke into a run. Tripped and recovered his balance at the last moment. Kicked the garden gate open. Bounded across the threshold, slammed the front door and locked it. Slid to the floor with his back against it, a cold bottle of beer in either hand.

  *

  At 2 a.m. he was lying in bed, checking to see how much of the second bottle was left. The camera was facing the bed, but he hadn’t started it yet. He did so and turned over on his side.

  He awoke and peered at the alarm clock. It was 3 a.m. He must have fallen asleep at once.

  The camera was humming.

  He thought he could hear other sounds overhead. Creaking footsteps, an iron ball rolling across the floor. At the same time, he was in no doubt that those sounds were all in his imagination.

  He couldn’t help reflecting that the camera was filming him at that moment. Him, not the Sleeper. Would he spot the difference when he watched the tape? Would he remember?

  His bladder was bursting. He threw off the bedclothes. As he passed the camera he waved, gave a twisted grin and said: ‘It’s me, not the Sleeper!’

  He padded barefoot along the passage to the bathroom. On the way back he gave the camera another wave. He patted the dust off the soles of his feet before getting into bed. Then pulled the bedclothes over his ears.

  20

  He blinked at the camera. It hadn’t been moved. Nor, it seemed, had anything else.

  It was 4 August. A month had gone by. At this hour four weeks ago he’d been waiting in vain for a bus. That was how it had begun.

  He opened the shutters. A sunny day. Not a branch or blade of grass was stirring. He got dressed. He felt the notebook in his pocket. He opened it at the first blank page and wrote:

  I wonder where you’ll be on 4 September and how you’re doing. And how you’ve been doing in the previous four weeks. Jonas, 4 August, Kanzelstein. Standing at the bedroom table, dressed, tired.

  He looked at the picture on the wall. To judge by the battered frame and faded colours, it was quite old. It depicted a lone sheep in a field. The animal was dolled up in jeans and a red sweater. It wore socks on its feet and, on its head, a hat cocked at a rakish angle. This curious sight reminded him of his dream.

  He’d been looking out of the window of his flat on the Brigittenauer embankment. A bird landed on the arm of a chair standing on a balcony that his flat didn’t have. He was delighted to see the bird. A living creature at last!

  All at once the bird’s head changed, becoming broader and more elongated. Its expression was mean and angry, as if Jonas were to blame for all that was happening to it. Under his intent gaze the bird underwent another transformation. It developed a hedgehog’s head and its body grew bigger. Jonas was now confronted by a hedgehog’s head on the body of a millipede one and a half metres long. The millipede curled up and scratched its face, which metamorphosed into that of a man. The human millipede gasped, its tongue protruding as if it were being throttled. Its countless little legs were flailing madly, and pink foam oozed from its nostrils.

  The head changed yet again. It turned into that of an eagle and a dog in quick succession. Neither the eagle nor the dog looked the way they should have looked. All these creatures gazed at him. The look in their eyes told him that they knew him of old. And that he knew them.

  *

  He breakfasted on pumpernickel and instant coffee. Then he opened all the windows and prowled around the house.

  He spent quite a while gazing out over the countryside from the south-facing balcony. Its dimensions puzzled him. Everything looked smaller and more cramped than he remembered. The balcony itself, for instance. It had once been a terrace spacious enough to play football on. Now he was standing on an ordinary balcony some four metres long and one-and-a-half wide. It was the same with the garden. He could have walked from end to end in well under a minute. He used to think of the Löhnebergers’ inn as a really big establishment. Now he saw that the ope
n space outside could accommodate no more than four cars parked side by side. Yesterday he’d counted the tables in the bar. There were six.

  As for the view from the balcony, in his imagination it had stretched for hundreds of kilometres. He now discovered that he could see little further than the next valley. His eye was brought up short by a range of hills no more than twenty kilometres away. The only really sizeable feature was the forest behind the house, which marked the extent of the property.

  In the games room he recognised the cupboard in which the table-tennis bats and balls and a spare net were kept. He examined its wooden sides for inscriptions and messages. He took out a bat and began to play against himself. He hit the ball high, to give himself time to get to the other end and return the shot. The sound of the ball striking the table top went echoing round the almost empty room.

  This was where his father had taught him to play. At first Jonas had made the mistake of standing too near the table, which exasperated his father. ‘No, back! Further back!’ he would yell, and he’d been known to hurl his bat at the net when annoyed with his incorrigible pupil. Jonas’s mother and Aunt Lena didn’t enjoy playing table tennis, and his father was no match for Uncle Reinhard.

  The handle of the bat had lost some of its plastic coating. Jonas’s hand stuck to it. He tossed it back into the cupboard, took out another and gave it an experimental swing, turning it over in his hand. It looked familiar.

  He eyed the bat with a touch of emotion. He had always picked it in the old days because he preferred its black surface and ribbed handle. Now he couldn’t see any appreciable difference between this bat and the others.

  Here. This was the place. His father had stood over there, he himself on this side.

  He flexed his knees to re-create a child’s-eye view of the table and leapt to and fro as if diving for the ball.

  His bat. His walking stick, too. From a time that was long gone. That would never come back. A time he could never re-enter, never use again.

  *

  Early that afternoon Jonas cooked himself some lunch at the inn. A plateful of noodles and potatoes from the larder he’d discovered behind an inconspicuous door. He ate a lot and drew himself a beer. It tasted and smelt bad. He poured it away and opened a bottle instead.

  He sat down on the terrace with the bottle and a fleece belonging to the landlord tied round his waist by the arms. He had also put on a frayed old peasant hat he had found hanging on a hook. The sun was scorching hot, but a strong wind was blowing. He finished off the bottle. Then he thought of the transceiver. He went inside and spent half an hour looking for it until he was satisfied it had gone.

  It had been there that Christmas nearly twenty-five years ago, but it hadn’t been working. They were snowed in, the roads were impassable, and then it happened: Leo the waiter, who was helping out over the holidays, gashed his hand chopping wood. Although the wound wasn’t thought to be too serious, it became infected. They couldn’t call a doctor because all the phone lines had been brought down by avalanches. To everyone’s alarm, Leo was confined to bed with blood poisoning. They were afraid he would die.

  Jonas happened to hear about the defective transceiver. The grown-ups, who thought he wanted to play some game or show off, gave him sidelong, pitying looks when he asked to see it. One look at the relay circuit, however, and Jonas realised that he really could be of help. He had drawn so many circuit diagrams in physics, an optional subject he was studying at school, that he asked for a length of copper wire and a soldering iron.

  A few minutes later, with his heart thumping, he gestured grandly at the transceiver and announced that it was working again. They all thought at first that he was joking. In fact his father showed signs of wanting to chuck him out of the window, transceiver and all. Jonas turned it on. As soon as the landlord heard it crackling he dashed over and sent an SOS. The helicopter that flew Leo to hospital landed two hours later.

  Frau Löhneberger wept. Herr Löhneberger slapped Jonas on the back, stood him an ice cream, and invited the whole family to a meal on the house. Jonas thought he would be in for more praise and more ice creams, but the incident wasn’t mentioned again after a day or two. Nor was any further reference made to a reporter who had wanted to put something about it in the local paper.

  *

  Once in the forest, Jonas put on the fleece and zipped it up. It didn’t seem to have rained here for some time. Little puffs of dust arose at every step he took up the path to the alpine hut. He recalled wearing a hood as a boy, for fear of ticks, which he wrongly believed to lurk in trees. Now, even one of those revolting little creatures would have been a comfort to him.

  He thought he remembered which way to go. To his surprise, however, nothing looked familiar. It wasn’t until he reached the hut from which he’d collected milk, and where he’d been presented with the walking stick, that images came to life in his mind’s eye.

  One summer holiday he was allowed to bring a school-friend whose parents had naturally, at his father’s insistence, been expected to pay for their son’s board and lodging. Jonas had decided to invite Leonhard. And it was with Leonhard, he now remembered, that he’d been up here one day. They had prowled around the hut like two Redskins planning to raid a ranch. Then, when the grizzled old giant of a man appeared in his doorway, the raiders’ courage had suddenly deserted them. They had bidden the trapper a sheepish good morning and vanished into the undergrowth.

  Jonas surveyed the mountainside, rifle over shoulder and peasant hat on head. He rested for a minute or two. Should he break into the hut? No, he didn’t feel hungry or thirsty, so he left the clearing and started climbing again.

  Nothing looked familiar to him.

  Now and then he heard a crack, like someone stepping on a fallen branch. He froze, listening.

  Jonas suppressed his mounting alarm. There was no need to be scared, he’d proved that last night. No one was after him. The sounds he was hearing sprang from his overheated imagination or were chance natural phenomena. Twigs snapping by themselves, perhaps. He was alone.

  ‘You aren’t there either,’ he said, looking over his shoulder. He repeated the words and laughed aloud despite himself, as if he’d cracked a joke.

  His mobile was showing half past five. The battery was nearly flat. There was no dialling tone, he noticed. That worried him, but why? Who would he have called? All the same, it was like a warning that he’d strayed too far. He turned back.

  And lengthened his stride.

  Something was welling up inside him. Growing stronger.

  To take his mind off it he recalled how, as a boy, he’d gone looking for Attila’s grave in these woods. He’d heard tell of it. According to legend, the king of the Huns had died while marching through Austria and been buried in a forest. Any hummock might conceal his tomb, and if Jonas found the spot it would make him rich and famous. He had also combed these woods with Leonhard. Every time they had come to a sizeable mound of earth they’d looked at each other and discussed its chances like experts. When out by himself he had only searched the edge of the forest within sight of the holiday house or the inn.

  The path was so overgrown with bracken, he kept tripping over hidden stones. Twice the rifle dug him hard in the side, knocking the breath out of him. He was annoyed he’d taken it with him, for all the use it had been.

  As if he’d bumped into a wall, he stopped short. It took him a long moment to realise what he’d just heard: a bell. A cowbell.

  There – there it went again, over to his left.

  ‘Wait! Now you’ll see something!’ he yelled.

  Holding his rifle in front of his chest, he dashed in the direction he thought the sound had come from. To his bewilderment, the third clang seemed to come from even further to his left. He changed direction. He gave no thought to what he would find and what he would do when he found it. He simply ran on.

  The sixth time the bell clanged, he felt unsure whether he was heading towards it or away from
it.

  ‘Hooo!’

  No answer. The bell, too, remained silent.

  He looked around. A geocaching tree caught his eye. Something told him he was on the right track. He hurried past the tree and squeezed through some bushes. Beyond them he came out in a small clearing with a lone birch tree standing in the middle.

  The bell was hanging from one of its branches.

  He scanned the area before going over to it. It was suspended on a surprisingly thin length of cord. The metal rims were flecked with rust, but there was no indication of how long the bell had been there or who had hung it up. It clanged whenever the wind blew, that was the only certainty.

  It occurred to Jonas how the bell might have got there, but that theory was too unpleasant to be credited.

  He looked for the route he had come by. Having ventured too far, he needed to get his bearings again. It wasn’t long before he thought he knew where he was and where he would come upon a path. He set off in that direction. Ten minutes later, when he had merely strayed even deeper into the forest, he was overcome by the feeling he’d had before.

  ‘Well, Attila, coming to get me?’

  He tried to give the words a hint of mockery, but his voice sounded feebler than he’d intended.

  He looked back. Dense forest. He didn’t even know which direction he’d come from.

  He ploughed straight on. On and on. You had to look for fixed points, enlist the help of the sun or the stars, that’s what he’d been taught as a boy. But he’d never got lost before, and he’d forgotten how you made sure of going straight ahead instead of in a circle.

  After another hour he thought he recognised a particular spot. However, he couldn’t decide whether he’d passed this way before or after he heard the cowbell. Or even twenty years ago.

  It surprised him how quickly the light was fading.

  Ahead of him was a small clearing overgrown with knee-high bracken and hazel bushes. The trunks of the surrounding beech trees were thickly coated with moss. The air smelt of mushrooms, but there were none to be seen.