Night Work

by Thomas Glavinic

  He looked in the rear-view mirror.

  No one.

  He switched on the interior light and turned round.

  Dirty upholstery. A crumpled cigarette packet. A CD.

  He switched off the light. Looked in the rear-view mirror again.

  Mopped his brow.

  Listened.

  *

  8 a.m. Smalltown.

  The sun was up, but Jonas felt it was a cinematic hoax, as if the sky were a sheet of painted canvas in a film studio. He couldn’t feel the sun’s rays. He couldn’t feel any wind.

  He looked at the building, the number on the gate, the railings in front of it. On a hoarding across the road, a young housewife was advertising some product he’d never heard of.

  Without reckoning up how many he’d taken, he swallowed another tablet. Quite suddenly he wondered how he’d got here. It wasn’t that he couldn’t remember the journey, but everything had become so unreal. Nothing seemed real, neither the drive here, nor the car, nor his present surroundings. Those tablets. Strong.

  He rested his hands on the steering wheel. You. This is you, here and now.

  Smalltown. Home to Marie’s sister, who had married an English sexton, and to her mother, who had moved in with her younger daughter after her husband’s death. This was where Marie had spent brief vacations twice a year. Jonas had never accompanied her, pleading pressure of work. The truth was, he’d always disliked getting to know his girlfriends’ parents.

  This was the building. The number was right and its appearance matched Marie’s description of it. A four-storeyed, brick-built block of flats on the outskirts of town.

  Jonas kicked the driver’s door open but didn’t get out. He eyed the woman on the hoarding. She reminded him of an actress he’d much admired. In the days before he acquired a video recorder he had postponed and cancelled appointments for her sake, filled with an abiding sense of gratitude for the privilege of being her contemporary.

  He had often tried to imagine what it would have been like to be born in another age with other contemporaries. In the fifteenth century, or in ad 400, or in 1000 bc. In Africa or Asia. Would he have been the same person?

  Chance dictated who you lived with. The waiter who served you in a restaurant, your coal merchant, your schoolteacher, your daughter-in-law. They were your contemporaries. Singers, CEOs, scientists, committee chairmen – they were the people with whom you shared the planet in your day. People living 100 years hence would be different and have other contemporaries. Even if they lived in another part of the world, contemporaries were, ultimately, something positively private. They could just as well have lived 500 years before or after you, but they were doing so now. At the same time as you. That was how Jonas had felt, simply grateful to many of his contemporaries for being alive at the same time as himself, for breathing the same air and seeing the same sunrises and sunsets. He would have liked to tell them so, too.

  He had wondered, many a time, whether Marie was his predestined partner in life. Would he have met her in any event? Might they also have met ten years later, and would the outcome have been the same? Might there exist, somewhere in the world, another woman who had been predestined for him? Might he only just have missed her on some occasion? Had they been standing together in a bus? Could they even have exchanged a glance, never to see each other again? Was her name Tanya, did she live with a man named Paul, was she unhappy with him, did she have children by him, was she wondering whether there might have been someone else?

  Or was there a woman living in some other age with whom he should be, or should have been, linked? Was she already dead? Had she been a contemporary of Haydn? Of Schönberg? Or was she yet to be born, and had he himself been born too soon? When debating all these possibilities, Jonas had ruled nothing out. He’d really been more interested in the question than in any possible answers.

  Drawing a deep breath, he got out and went up to the entrance, where he read the list of names beside the intercom.

  T. Gane / L. Sadier

  P. Harvey

  R. M. Hall

  Rosy Labouche

  Peter Kaventsmann

  F. Ibañez-Talavera

  Hunter Stockton

  Oscar Kliuna-ai

  P. Malachy

  That was the name. Malachy. The name of the man Marie’s sister had married. The sexton.

  Jonas drew another deep breath, then pushed the door open. It didn’t occur to him to look around for a weapon. Although the lobby and stairs were only dimly lit, he felt unafraid. What drove him was a mixture of longing and despair. Nothing that would have made him turn back, whatever unpleasantness he encountered.

  The flat was on the second floor. He tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked.

  He turned the light on. The first thing he saw was a pair of shoes – hers. Almost at the same time, he remembered how they had bought them together from a shop in Judengasse. He rubbed his eyes.

  When he looked up again he saw her jacket hanging from a hook in the passage. He put out his hand and stroked the material, buried his face in it, breathed in her smell.

  ‘Hi,’ he said dully.

  He couldn’t help thinking of the rest of her clothes. The ones in Vienna at this moment. How far away they were. Thousands of kilometres away.

  It was a spacious flat. The kitchen led off the living room, the living room adjoined a bedroom, probably that of Marie’s sister and her husband. The occupant of the next bedroom was clearly an elderly woman. This was apparent from various objects, but also from its tidiness and the way it smelt.

  The third bedroom lay at the end of the passage. One look was enough to convince him. Marie’s suitcase against the wall. Her make-up case on the chest of drawers. The slippers she took everywhere beside the bed, on which lay her nightdress. Her jeans, her blouse, her jewellery, her bra, her scent. Her mobile. Which he’d called so often. And on whose voicemail he’d left messages. The battery was flat. He didn’t know her PIN number.

  Having dumped the suitcase on the bed, he opened the wardrobe and drawers and packed anything that came to hand. He didn’t bother to fold things any more than he worried about soiling her blouses with the soles of her shoes.

  A last look around. Nothing else. He knelt on the suitcase and zipped it up.

  *

  He lay on her bed, his head on her pillow, her duvet over him for warmth. Her smell enveloped him. He found it odd that she seemed far more alive to him here than in the flat they’d shared. Perhaps it was because this was where she’d been last.

  He heard a noise. He didn’t know where it was coming from, but it didn’t scare him.

  *

  He hadn’t checked the time, so he couldn’t have said how long he’d been lying there. It was after midday. He carried the suitcase out to the car and went back to see if he’d missed anything. In the wastepaper basket he found a shopping list in Marie’s handwriting. He smoothed it out and put it in his pocket.

  *

  He drove steadily, nonchalantly. Now and then he turned his head, but not for fear that someone might be sitting behind him, just to make sure the suitcase was really there. He stopped to eat and drink and stacked some bottles of mineral water on the passenger seat. He’d been tormented since that morning by an almost unquenchable thirst, probably another side effect of the tablets. His urine, when he relieved himself, had a pinkish tinge. Shaking his head, he squeezed another tablet out of its blister pack. His shoulders were going numb.

  He soon lost all conception of how long he’d been driving. Distances seemed to be relative. The motorway signs meant nothing. Having only just passed Lancaster, he came to the Coventry turn-off shortly afterwards. On the other hand, the stretch between Northampton and Luton seemed to take hours. He looked at his feet operating the pedals.

  As a youngster he’d been mystified when pop and film stars committed suicide. Why kill yourself when you had everything? Why did people snuff themselves out when they had millio
ns in the bank, consorted with other celebrities and went to bed with the most famous and desirable individuals on the planet? Because they were lonely, was the answer. Lonely and unhappy. How stupid, he’d thought. You didn’t kill yourself because of that. That singer shouldn’t have slit her wrists, she should have called him instead. He would have been a good friend to her. He would have listened to her, comforted her, taken her away on holiday. She would have had a better friend in him than any she could ever have found among her fellow stars. He would have taken a detached view of her problems and straightened her out. In his company she would have felt secure.

  Or so he had thought. It wasn’t until later that he grasped why those people had killed themselves: for the same reason as the poor and unknown. They couldn’t hold on to themselves. They couldn’t endure being alone with themselves and had realised that other people’s company was only a palliative. That it thrust the problem into the background without solving it. Being yourself twenty-four hours a day, never anyone else, was a blessing in many cases but a curse in others.

  *

  At Sevenoaks, south of London, he exchanged the car for a moped big enough for him to wedge the suitcase between his legs and the handlebars. Whether he would last fifty kilometres like that was another matter, but he needed a two-wheeler. He had no wish to go through the Tunnel on foot. The light of the setting sun helped him in his quest. He hadn’t wanted to make his way through Dover in the dark.

  Jonas rode down the motorway at eighty to ninety k.p.h., trying every few minutes to find a more comfortable position for his legs. He drew up his knees and cautiously rested his feet on the suitcase, hung his legs over it and let his feet dangle. He even doubled up one leg and sat on it, but a relaxed position eluded him. When it got dark he wedged his legs between the suitcase and the seat and left it at that.

  The headwind seemed to refresh his brain. He soon felt more clear-headed and less as if he were propelling himself along under water. He was able to reflect on what lay ahead. First through the Tunnel, then across France and Germany, collecting up the cameras. And all this on tablets, with a smouldering fuse.

  He would never sleep again.

  Shortly before his destination he recognised a grain silo despite the darkness. From here it was barely two kilometres to the mouth of the Tunnel. If he turned off right, however, he would get to the field where he’d spent the night.

  He didn’t know why, but something inside him made him turn off. His muscles automatically tensed as the beam of the moped’s headlight illuminated the field ahead of him. The wind was strengthening. The silence seemed to be more natural, and that was just what Jonas found so unpleasant. But he didn’t turn back. Something lured him on. At the same time, he knew that he was being irrational, that there was no good reason for this escapade.

  Outside the tent he killed the engine but left the headlight on. He got off.

  The motorbike with the slashed tyres. The awning. Sleeping mats lying around. An uninflated air-bed. A torn road map. Two sacks of rubbish. And the clothes he’d left here. He felt them. They were almost dry. He took off his borrowed things and put on his trousers and T-shirt. Only his shoes were past wearing. The damp had warped and shrunk the leather. He couldn’t get his feet into them.

  He switched off the moped’s headlight, not wanting to be stranded here with a flat battery.

  Although everything inside him balked at the prospect, he went inside the tent and sat down. He groped for the torch and turned it on. Two rucksacks. The tins of food. The camping stove. The Discman and CDs. The newspaper. The sex magazine.

  Five days ago he’d spent the night here.

  This sleeping bag had been lying here on its own for five days. And for over a month before his first visit. It would lie here on its own from now on.

  Something brushed against the outside of the tent.

  ‘Hey!’

  It sounded as if someone were searching for the entrance on the wrong side. Jonas strained his eyes but could see nothing, no figure, no moving shape. He knew it was the wind, could only be the wind, but he gulped involuntarily. And coughed.

  No need to be scared of anything that has a voice, he told himself.

  Taking care to move steadily and smoothly, he crawled out of the tent. It was a clear night. He drew several deep breaths. Without looking round, he started the moped and rode off with one arm raised in farewell.

  Never again. He would never come back here again.

  This thought preoccupied him on the way to the Tunnel. The same thought continued to preoccupy him as he plunged into its dark mouth and the space around him was suddenly filled with the throaty hum of the engine. That tent, those sleeping bags, those CDs – he’d seen them for the last time, would never see them again. They were over and done with. He realised that they were arbitrarily selected, unimportant objects. To him, however, they possessed importance, if only the importance conferred on them by the fact that he remembered them better than other things. They were objects he’d touched and whose touch he could still feel. Objects he could recall as vividly as if they were right in front of him. End of story.

  *

  He squeezed between the train and the side of the tunnel. Once past the rearmost carriage, he felt around in the darkness until he grasped the handlebars of the DS. The saddle emitted its usual pneumatic hiss as he sat down on it. A well-remembered sound. He smiled.

  ‘Hello,’ he murmured.

  The DS had been waiting here since he’d abandoned it. It had stood in this spot beneath the sea while he’d been in England, hearing and seeing nothing, just standing here behind the train. It had been standing here in the dark when he got to Smalltown. Standing here with these handlebars and this seat and this footrest. Click-click. With this gear change. Here. While he was far away.

  And now the moped was standing at the other end of the train. It would continue to stand there for a long time. Until it rusted away and disintegrated, or until the roof of the tunnel collapsed. For many years. All alone in the dark.

  Jonas wedged the suitcase between himself and the handlebars. He’d had more room on the moped, but there was enough to enable him to ride straight along a tunnel. He stepped on the kick-starter. The engine caught, the headlight came on.

  ‘Ah,’ he said softly.

  *

  Stars were twinkling overhead when he reached the other side, and he felt he ought to greet each one. The moon was shining, the air was mild. Silence reigned.

  The truck was standing where he’d left it. He thumped the side with his fist. No sound of movement. Cautiously, he opened the tailboard and peered in. Darkness.

  He crawled inside. He knew roughly where a torch was to be found. While feeling around for it he sang a marching song at the top of his voice, one his father had taught him. Whenever he couldn’t remember the words he plugged the gaps with barrack-room expletives.

  He turned on the torch and searched every corner of the interior, even shining a light beneath the furniture. It wouldn’t have surprised him to come across an explosive charge or an acid bath, but he found nothing. Nothing that struck him as suspicious.

  He wheeled the DS on board. He was about to secure it to the bars when the floor beneath his feet gave a lurch. At the same time, he heard a clatter.

  He leapt out of the truck. On the ground the swaying sensation was even stronger. Feeling dizzy, he lay down.

  An earthquake.

  It stopped just as this occurred to him, but he went on lying there for several minutes with his arms and legs stretched out, waiting.

  An earthquake. Only a minor one, but an earthquake in a world in which only one human being existed provided the latter with food for thought. Was this an ordinary natural phenomenon – part of a process that would continue for countless millions of years? Was it a displacement of tectonic plates, in other words, or was it a message?

  After lying on the bare ground for ten minutes and getting his clothes wet again, he ventured back
into the truck. He promptly closed the tailboard and turned on all the lights. Then he stripped off his wet things and took some trousers and a pair of shoes from a cupboard.

  While changing he recalled what had been reported about another quake some years ago. That one had occurred on the sun, not the earth. Its magnitude had been estimated at 12 on the Richter scale. The most powerful quake ever recorded here on earth had reached a magnitude of 9.5. Because magnitude 12 defied the imagination, the scientists added that the sunquake had been comparable in extent to the cataclysm that would result if dynamite were laid across all five continents to a depth of one metre and detonated all at once.

  A layer of dynamite one metre deep. All over the world. Detonated all at once. That was magnitude 12. It sounded colossal, but who could really imagine the devastation that would be wrought by the detonation of some 150 million cubic kilometres of dynamite?

  Jonas had pictured that sunquake, yet no one had been there to witness it. The sun had quaked in solitude. At magnitude 12. Neither he nor anyone else had been there. Nobody had seen that quake, just as nobody had seen the robot land on Mars, but it had happened just the same. The sun had quaked, the robot had floated down to the surface of Mars. Those events had taken place – had exerted an influence on other things.

  *

  Dawn was breaking when Jonas collected the first camera at Metz. He was delighted to discover that it hadn’t rained and the mechanism was still working. He rewound the tape, which appeared to have recorded something. He would have liked to watch it right away, but there was no time.

  Although his eyes were smarting more and more, he drove on. He didn’t bother with another tablet for the time being. He wasn’t tired. The problems with which his body was contending were mechanical. His eyes. His joints. It was as if the marrow had been sucked from his bones. He swallowed a Parkemed.