He heard a scraping sound. The car went jolting over the kerb. He braked and drove on more slowly. He felt tempted to tear off the goggles but resisted the impulse.
‘Turn right at the next intersection.’
A beep. He turned right and accelerated away.
He had read somewhere that your eyes initially saw everything inverted by 180 degrees. That they transmitted an upside-down image of the world to the brain. But because the brain knew that people didn’t walk around on their heads and mountains were broader at the base than the summit, it turned the image round. Your eyes deceived you, in a sense, and your brain acted as a corrective. Whether true or not, this posed an important question: how could he be certain that what his eyes were seeing was genuinely there?
He was really just a lump of flesh groping its way through the world. His knowledge of that world derived mainly from his eyes. They enabled him to get his bearings, make decisions, avoid collisions. But nothing and no one could guarantee that they told him the truth. Colour blindness was just one harmless example of this potential untruthfulness. The world could look like this or differently. To him it existed in only one possible form, the one allowed by his eyes. His self was a blind thing in a cage. It was all that his skin contained. His eyes formed part of this – or not, as the case might be.
The disembodied voice announced that he had reached the required destination. He pulled off his goggles.
The suburbs. Some outlying district, at all events. Expensive cars parked alongside garden fences. Detached houses with satellite dishes, balconies with ornamental plants. Jonas saw a broken branch lying in the roadway at the next intersection.
The street looked familiar. He checked the address. Something flashed through his mind, but he couldn’t pin it down. It wasn’t until he got out that the memory resurfaced: the suburban house he was standing outside was only 100 metres from the one he’d searched weeks ago. The one to which he’d been directed by his own phone messages, and in which he’d shied away from entering a particular room.
He read the name on the garden gate: Dr August Lom. He rang the bell, lifted the latch. The gate swung open with a rattling sound.
Jonas had a momentary vision of a shaggy beast cavorting around the garden on the far side of the house, its long tongue slapping each ear in turn as it lashed to and fro. The creature was only waiting for him to dare to go in.
Outside the front door, on which a wreath woven from sprigs of fir was hanging, he unslung his shotgun, listening intently. He cocked the weapon and concentrated.
Something told him that he’d reached a dead end.
He tried the door. Locked. He smashed a window. The burglar alarm went off. He registered it for a second, no longer, then it receded into the background. The moment his feet touched the carpet in the hallway, he heard nothing, smelt nothing. He set off.
A room. Furniture, a TV, pictures.
Another room. More furniture. House plants. Strangely, puzzlingly untidy.
The next room. Gym mats, a punchball, a home trainer.
And the next. Shower, bathtub, clothes horse.
He searched the place with a firm gaze and brisk movements, turned off the burglar alarm, tramped across carpeted floors, felt things, went down into the basement and up into the attic. Now and then a lucid part of his brain warned him to retract his hand or turn on his heel.
By the time he was back outside and gradually coming to his senses, he felt convinced that nothing in the house could be of any help to him. And that was all he’d wanted to know.
He smelt of sweat, he noticed as he got back into the car. It was the acrid smell he gave off when very tense. That annoyed him. There was no need to be scared, he’d proved it that night at Kanzelstein.
He was briefly tempted to put on the blinkered goggles and go back inside. Without his gun, what’s more.
‘No way,’ he said, and turned the car.
*
He was gazing at the cathedral from the terrace of the Sky Bar. His coffee cup stood untouched on the table beside him. Without really thinking, he swallowed two Diclofenac. Something was bothering him. It was minutes before he realised that they’d stuck in his throat. He washed them down with some water.
He wandered around the terrace, flapping his arms for warmth. Spat over the balustrade and saw the spittle splash-land on the canopy below.
Good. The time had come. He must leave. Preferably today. That was asking too much, but he might have completed all his preparations by tomorrow.
By a conservative estimate, at least a third of the world lay beyond his reach. He could drive to Berlin, Paris, Prague or Moscow. He could inspect the Great Wall of China. The route to the Saudi Arabian oilfields lay open to him. He could visit Base Camp below Mount Everest if he could get used to the altitude and raise enough energy for a two-week trek on foot. What he could never get to was America. And Australia. And the Antarctic.
With a feeling of envy, he recalled his youthful dream. At some stage in his life, he had promised himself, he would stand amid the ice and touch the signpost reading Geographic South Pole. However he got there, whether with a traditional expedition of the kind that was seldom undertaken these days and would probably not accept him, or whether he landed in a chartered Russian military machine, he wanted to touch that signpost, shut his eyes and think of home. Of Marie doing the shopping at that moment, of his father playing chess in the park, of Martina rejecting a design at the office. Of the alarm clock ticking away in his flat. Unnoticed, because there was nobody there. It didn’t matter to the alarm clock whether Jonas was at the South Pole or in the kitchen next door. He wasn’t there. The alarm clock was all on its own.
To touch that signpost in a white wilderness. Not to go for a walk or a short trip by car, but to be fifteen hours by air from civilisation. That had been his dream. To go as far south as possible, to indulge his yearning for far-off places.
He would never see the Pole.
Jonas sat down again and put his feet up on the balustrade. He scanned the roofs below. How old were those houses? A century-and-a-half? Three centuries? And how many people had lived in them? The world changed little – the world he knew, at any rate. But it changed constantly and lastingly. Someone was born every second, someone died every second.
Austria. What was Austria? The people who lived there. The death of someone meant no essential change. Not, at least, from the country’s point of view, only from that of the person in question. And of their relations. Austria didn’t change much when someone died. But if you compared the Austria of a few weeks ago with Austria a century ago, you could hardly claim there had been no change. No one who had lived in those houses was still alive. All were dead. All had departed one by one. A big difference from their angle, none from that of the country.
‘Austria.’ ‘Germany.’ ‘The United States.’ ‘France.’
People lived in houses they’d inherited and walked streets paved by others long before them. Then they got into bed and died, as they had to. To make room for another ‘Austria’.
Everyone dies for himself alone. Statistics, fellow citizens, community, us, TV, football stadium, newspaper. Everyone read a certain writer in the paper. When he died, everyone read what his successor wrote. They all thought, ah, that’s that guy, he writes this and that. And when he died they’d say, ah, a new guy, he writes this. They’d go home, still a part of the whole. Lie in bed and die, and suddenly no longer be part of the whole. No longer members of the Alpine Association or the Academy of Sciences or the Union of Journalists or the local football club. No longer customers of the best hairdresser in town or patients of that nice lady doctor. No longer fellow citizens, just ‘the dead’.
It made a difference to the people who had disappeared. Or did it? Did it make a difference only to him, the one left behind?
*
Jonas emptied the back of the truck completely. He swept and scrubbed the interior until the metal floor and sides had almost r
egained their original colour. Then he lined the floor with self-adhesive, non-slip carpet tiles.
He trundled a three-piece suite and an additional sofa out of a furniture store on the Lerchenfelder Gürtel and manhandled them into the back of the truck. To these he added a massive coffee table, a scroll-fronted TV cabinet containing a TV and a video recorder, two standard lamps with broad bases, and an additional armchair. He put throws and cushions on the sofa and a bound stack of Mort & Phil comics beside it. He pushed a fridge up against the side and plugged the lead into a transformer he’d got from Machine Park South. He also took two generators.
He filled the fridge with mineral water, fruit juice, beer, lemonade, pickled gherkins and other things that tasted better chilled. Beside it he stacked crates of long-life milk, tinned food, vacuum-packed pumpernickel, biscuits, bags of flour and similar stuff, not forgetting such extras as salt, pepper and sugar, oil and vinegar.
More crates were needed. One for cutlery and crockery, another for batteries, a camping stove and cartridges, and several for the cameras he fetched from the Brigittenauer embankment. He unscrewed the tripods and laid them down wherever there was room on the floor. He stacked six-packs of mineral water along the sides.
He checked the stability of his load. Anything that threatened to fall over he secured with tape.
He chained the DS to the vertical load bars. To the horizontal bars on the opposite side he secured a Kawasaki Ninja with only 400 metres on the clock, which he wheeled straight out of the dealer’s showroom and onto the hoist. Last of all, having filled the Toyota’s tank as well, he drove it on board. He might have measured the available space with a ruler, it fitted so perfectly.
*
Jonas put his plate in the dishwasher and turned on the light. He went over to the window. The sun had sunk below the rooftops, the clouds were glowing in various shades of red. He cast a last glance at the truck standing ready below, then shut the window.
He had a feeling that the journey ahead of him was the prelude to a final act. Everything seemed so clear all of a sudden. Tomorrow he would set off in search of Marie. Then he would return here with or without her. Probably without her.
25
At Linz he made a special detour from the motorway to visit the Spider. He climbed through the shattered glass door into the car showroom. The Spider was where it had come to rest, the kilometre reading unchanged.
Jonas got in behind the wheel. He touched the gear lever, touched the heating, air-conditioning and warning-light controls, depressed the pedals. He shut his eyes and cast his mind back.
It was strange. Having thought he would never regard this car as his property, he now recalled the trips he’d made in it. He remembered what it was like to be the Jonas who had sat here and driven this sports car around Vienna.
He recalled the day he’d brought the Spider back here. He had loaded up the Toyota, never thinking he would return. And the Spider had stood here on its own all this time. While he was elsewhere.
He wrenched his eyes open and smacked his forehead with the flat of his hand. If he continued to sit here he would fall asleep in no time. He had woken up so exhausted this morning, he’d kept the truck to the middle lane for fear of nodding off.
He sounded the horn as he drove away and gave the Spider a final wave.
*
A good opportunity to set up the next camera presented itself just beyond Passau. Jutting out from the dilapidated walls of a road maintenance depot was an overhanging roof, beneath which sacks of salt were stored for protection in winter. He set up the camera beneath this with the lens trained on the direction he’d come from and programmed it to start recording at 4 p.m. the next day.
He read the kilometre mark on a post in the ground and recorded it in his notebook, then added the figure 3 and drew a circle round it. The 2 above it referred to a car park near Amstetten, the 1 to a sign between Vienna and St Pölten. Those first two cameras were in the open. He hoped it wouldn’t rain before he returned. If it did, at least the tapes should be intact.
He emptied a bottle of water over his head and drank a can of some energy drink that claimed to contain as much caffeine as nine cups of espresso.
The air was cool, the temperature well below what he was accustomed to in Vienna. Fields of maize stretched away on all sides. A tractor stood abandoned on a farm track.
‘Hello!’
He walked across the carriageway and climbed over the crash barrier. No parked cars. No sign of life. Nothing.
‘Hello!’
Although he shouted as loudly as he could, his voice sounded feeble out here. The moment he stopped, it was as if no man-made sound had been heard here for an eternity.
*
He had lunch at a service area near Regensburg. The café yielded some onions, noodles and potatoes, fortunately, so he didn’t need to touch his stores. After eating he wrote Jonas, 10 August on one of the menu boards.
He set up the fourth camera beside the filling station. He noted down its location, then programmed the tape for 4 p.m. the next day and filled up with diesel. In the shop he spotted a coffee mug with his name on it. He stowed it in a bag, together with some cold drinks.
He was dog-tired. His eyes were smarting, his jaw ached, and his back felt as if he’d been lugging sacks of cement around for days. When he got in behind the wheel he almost gave in to the lure of the bunk behind his seat. If he went to sleep now, however, he would have to drive too far tomorrow, and he didn’t want to be pressed for time.
The next cameras he set up near Nuremberg, one before the exit road and one beyond. The seventh he stationed at the exit road to Ansbach, the eighth at Schwäbisch Hall. Despite the possibility of rain, he left the ninth in the middle of the carriageway near Heilbronn. The tenth, too, was simply left on the asphalt just short of Heidelberg, unprotected and without a tripod.
Half dreaming, he drove through tracts of countryside he’d never seen before. They failed to arouse his interest. Sometimes he was aware of the luxuriant scenery, the dense forests and lush meadows and friendly little houses near the motorway. Sometimes he seemed to be driving through an interminable wasteland, a bleak grey wilderness of ramshackle barns and scorched fields, unsightly factories and power stations. It was all the same to him. With precise, unvarying movements he set up his cameras and got back into the truck.
*
At Saarbrücken he could go no further. His target for the day had been Rheims, which would have meant a comfortable drive the next day. Even so, he’d driven far enough not to have to worry about getting there by 4 p.m.
He parked in the middle lane. Taking last night’s tape with him, he made his way round to the back of the truck. His legs were so weak, he couldn’t clamber aboard and had to use the remote control. The humming hoist carried him up.
He inserted the tape and dug out some biscuits and a bar of chocolate. Although the wound left by the extractions wasn’t hurting, he took two Diclofenac. He sank onto the sofa with a sigh of relief.
He shut his eyes. He meant to do so for only a moment, but it was an effort to open them again. They were smarting with tiredness.
He turned on the TV and selected the AV channel. The screen turned blue. Everything was ready, but he hesitated to start the tape. Something was bothering him.
He looked around but couldn’t put his finger on it. He sat up and had another look.
It was the rear entrance. He couldn’t see it because the Toyota was in the way. The tailboard had been left open to admit daylight, but he couldn’t relax like this. He turned on every available light and pressed the remote control. For a moment he thought he was falling forwards, but it was really the tailboard folding up towards him.
*
A bare room. No furniture, not even a window. White walls, white floor. Everything was white.
The naked figure on the floor was also white. White and so motionless it was a minute before Jonas realised he wasn’t looking at an e
mpty room. He didn’t look more closely until he detected movement. Gradually, he began to make out shapes. An elbow, a knee, the head.
After ten minutes the figure stood up and walked around. It was covered from head to foot in white paint, or possibly dressed in a white leotard. Its hair was invisible, creating an impression of baldness. Everything was white: eyebrows, lips, ears, hands. It walked around the room in a seemingly aimless fashion, as if lost in thought or waiting for something.
Without a sound.
Over half an hour went by. Then the figure slowly turned to face the camera. When it raised its head, Jonas saw its eyes for the first time. Their appearance fascinated him. They were clearly wearing contact lenses, because no irises or pupils could be seen. The figure stared at the camera with two white orbs. Motionless. For minutes on end. Tensely.
At length it raised its arm and tapped the lens with the knuckle of its forefinger. It looked as if it were tapping its way out of the TV screen.
It tapped and tapped again. Mutely, white orbs staring, it continued to tap the screen.
Somehow, Jonas managed to operate the remote. He meant to switch off, but he pressed fast-forward instead. The tape ended after an hour.
*
Fresh air streamed into the stuffy interior when Jonas opened the tailboard. He drew several deep breaths, then picked up a pair of binoculars and jumped down onto the roadway. He spent a long time scanning the area with the binoculars clamped to his eyes.
Lifeless clusters of houses, abandoned cars up to their hub caps in mud. A scarecrow in an overgrown field, broomstick arms extended. Scattered clouds drifting across the sky. The only sound was that of his footsteps on the brittle asphalt.
In the cab he made a note of the truck’s kilometre reading and locked himself in. Without setting up a camera or getting undressed, he flopped down on the bunk and, with a final effort, pulled a blanket over himself. His eyelids felt like sandpaper.
Night Work Page 26